Centre for Health Economics & Policy Innovation, Department of Economics & Public Policy, Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, London, W2 1PG, UK.
Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2022 Jun 15;19(1):69. doi: 10.1186/s12966-022-01308-x.
Beverage and food taxes have become a popular 'best buy' public health intervention in the global battle to tackle noncommunicable diseases. Though many countries have introduced taxes, mainly targeting products containing sugar, there is great heterogeneity in tax design. For taxes levied as import tariffs, there is limited evidence of effectiveness in changing the price and sale of taxed products, while the evidence base is stronger for excise taxes levied as a fixed amount per quantity of product. This paper examines the effect of the Bermuda Discretionary Foods Tax, which was based on import tariff changes, on retail prices and sales of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), and on selected fruits and vegetables that benefited from a tariff reduction.
We used weekly electronic point-of-sale data from a major food retailer in Bermuda. We assessed historical weekly sales and price data using an interrupted time series design on 2,703 unique products between the dates of January 2018 through January 2020, covering 103 weeks.
By January 2020, the average price per ounce of SSBs increased by 26.0%, while the price of untaxed beverages (including waters and non-added sugar drinks) remained constant. The increasing price of SSBs was the sole observable structural driver of SSB market share, responsible for a decrease in the market share by nearly eight percentage points by the end of the study period. The subsidy on fruits and vegetables was ineffective in changing prices and sales, due to the relatively small 5% import tax decrease.
The tax was largely passed through to consumers. However, several factors mitigated the impact of the tax on the prices paid for SSBs by consumers, including the specific design of the tax, price promotions and consumer responses. The experience of Bermuda provides important lessons for the planning of similar taxes in the future.
饮料和食品税已成为全球应对非传染性疾病斗争中的一项热门“最佳选择”公共卫生干预措施。尽管许多国家已经开征了此类税收，主要针对含糖产品，但在税收设计方面存在很大的异质性。对于作为进口关税征收的税收，其在改变应税产品的价格和销售方面的有效性证据有限，而对于按产品数量征收的固定金额征收的消费税，证据基础则更强。本文考察了百慕大任意食品税的效果，该税基于进口关税的变化，对含糖饮料（SSB）的零售价格和销售以及受益于关税降低的某些水果和蔬菜产生了影响。
我们使用了百慕大一家主要食品零售商的每周电子销售点数据。我们使用中断时间序列设计，对 2018 年 1 月至 2020 年 1 月期间的 2703 种独特产品的历史每周销售和价格数据进行了评估，涵盖了 103 周。
到 2020 年 1 月，SSB 的每盎司平均价格上涨了 26.0%，而未征税饮料（包括水和无糖饮料）的价格保持不变。SSB 市场份额的唯一可观察到的结构驱动因素是 SSB 的价格上涨，导致研究期末 SSB 市场份额下降近 8 个百分点。由于进口税降低了 5%，水果和蔬菜的补贴对价格和销售没有产生影响。
该税主要由消费者承担。然而，有几个因素减轻了税收对消费者支付 SSB 价格的影响，包括税收的具体设计、价格促销和消费者的反应。百慕大的经验为未来类似税收的规划提供了重要的经验教训。
