Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias de la Empresa, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Cartagena, Spain.
Taxation and Health, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Tob Control. 2019 Jul;28(4):434-439. doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2018-054342. Epub 2018 Aug 17.
The European Commission has formally opened a process of revision of its tobacco tax directive. The purpose of this study is to analyse the evolution of cigarette and roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco prices in order to identify avenues for the improvement of public health goals.
Pooled cross-sectional data on prices and taxes on cigarettes and RYO tobacco in the Member States over 2004-2015 is used to track the distributions of the most popular price category and the weighted average price of these products and to relate them to the underlying tax structure.
The inflation-adjusted prices for the two products have increased over the period, but the dispersion of prices across Member States has remained constant. Throughout the period, there was a pervasive price gap between cigarettes and RYO tobacco within the Member States. Such features are explained by the underlying tax design.
The current tax stance has been successful at increasing both cigarette and RYO tobacco prices. To further enhance the public health impact of the European Union tax directive, the revision should promote the convergence of prices across Member States and aim at closing the price gap between cigarettes and RYO tobacco. These objectives call for increasing the mandatory minimum levels of excise duty on the two products, preferably linking them to the evolution of a European weighted average price. The pace of increase should be faster for RYO tobacco in order to close the gap with respect to cigarette prices.
欧盟委员会已正式启动对其烟草税指令的修订程序。本研究旨在分析卷烟和自卷烟草价格的演变，以寻找改善公共卫生目标的途径。
利用 2004-2015 年成员国卷烟和自卷烟草价格和税收的汇总横截面数据，跟踪最受欢迎价格类别的分布情况以及这些产品的加权平均价格，并将其与基本税收结构联系起来。
这两种产品的通胀调整价格在这一期间有所上涨，但成员国之间的价格分散度保持不变。在整个期间，成员国内部卷烟和自卷烟草之间存在普遍的价格差距。这种特征可以用基本的税收设计来解释。
现行的税收政策在提高卷烟和自卷烟草价格方面取得了成功。为了进一步增强欧盟税收指令对公共卫生的影响，修订工作应促进成员国之间价格的趋同，并旨在缩小卷烟和自卷烟草之间的价格差距。这些目标要求提高对这两种产品的强制性最低消费税水平，最好将其与欧洲加权平均价格的变化联系起来。自卷烟草的增长速度应该更快，以便缩小与卷烟价格的差距。
