Barker Dianne C, Wang Shu, Merriman David, Crosby Andrew, Resnick Elissa A, Chaloupka Frank J
Barker Bi-Coastal Health Consultants, Inc, Calabasas, California, USA.
Department of Political Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.
Tob Control. 2016 Oct;25(Suppl 1):i38-i43. doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2016-053012.
A number of recent studies document the proportion of all cigarette packs that are 'contraband' using discarded packs to measure tax avoidance and evasion, which we call tax non-compliance. To date, academic studies using discarded packs focused on relatively small geographical areas such as a city or a neighbourhood.
We visited 160 communities across 38 US states in 2012 and collected data from littered cigarette packs as part of the State and Community Tobacco Control (SCTC) Research Initiative and the Bridging the Gap Community Obesity Measures Project (BTG-COMP). Data collectors were trained in a previously tested littered pack data collection protocol.
Field teams collected 2116 packs with cellophane across 132 communities. We estimate a national tax non-compliance rate of 18.5% with considerable variation across regions. Suburban areas had lower non-compliance than urban areas as well as areas with high and low median household income areas compared with middle income areas.
We present the first academic national study of tax non-compliance using littered cigarette packs. We demonstrate the feasibility of meaningful large-scale data collection using this methodology and document considerable variation in tax non-compliance across areas, suggesting that both policy differences and geography may be important in control of illicit tobacco use. Given the geography of open borders among countries with varying tax rates, this simple methodology may be appropriate to estimate tax non-compliance in countries that use tax stamps or other pack markings, such as health warnings.
近期的一些研究通过使用丢弃的烟包来衡量逃税和避税情况（我们称之为税收不遵从），记录了所有烟包中“违禁品”的比例。迄今为止，使用丢弃烟包的学术研究集中在相对较小的地理区域，如一个城市或一个社区。
2012年，我们走访了美国38个州的160个社区，收集了散落的烟包数据，作为州和社区烟草控制（SCTC）研究倡议以及弥合差距社区肥胖测量项目（BTG - COMP）的一部分。数据收集者接受了先前测试过的烟包垃圾数据收集协议的培训。
实地团队在132个社区收集了2116个带有玻璃纸的烟包。我们估计全国税收不遵从率为18.5%，各地区存在相当大的差异。与中等收入地区相比，郊区的不遵从率低于城市地区以及家庭收入中位数高和低的地区。
我们展示了第一项使用散落烟包进行税收不遵从情况研究的全国性学术研究。我们证明了使用这种方法进行有意义的大规模数据收集的可行性，并记录了各地区税收不遵从情况的显著差异，这表明政策差异和地理位置在控制非法烟草使用方面可能都很重要。鉴于税率不同的国家之间存在开放边界的地理情况，这种简单方法可能适用于估计使用税票或其他烟包标识（如健康警告）的国家的税收不遵从情况。
