The only way that the tax might not be passed to consumers is if the government had some way of figuring out the profits of the drug store industry, then mandating that the tax come out of them. This would basically mean that CEO’s and other workers wouldn’t be paid as much (I assume they’d be getting paid more than what they *should* receive in a perfectly competitive market), and it would be these workers, therefore, who would bear the brunt of the tax. It’s not as if the “drug store” itself would be the one to suffer the consequences of a tax increase.