The government is committed to promoting a “smoke-free Hong Kong”. After the tobacco tax was increased last year, the number of requests for help at the quit hotline increased. The Secretary for Medical and Health, Mr Lo Chung-moo, had previously announced that he was considering raising tobacco taxes again. Tobacco tax accounts for more than 70% of the tax revenue on dutiable goods in government coffers. The current tobacco tax rate accounts for about 64% of the retail price of cigarettes, which is lower than the 75% recommended by the World Health Organization. In other words, tobacco taxes still have room to increase under international standards. However, some members of the Legislative Council and the newsstand industry believe that increasing cigarette taxes will exacerbate the problem of illicit cigarettes. It will not only help warehouses but also make it more difficult for the retail industry to operate.
Reporter: Wang Weibang
Last year’s “Budget” proposed an increase in tobacco tax, which would immediately increase the tobacco tax per cigarette by 6 cents, and increase the tax rate on other tobacco products in the same proportion, that is, by 31.48%. After the tax increase, each pack of cigarettes costs about 72 yuan to 80 yuan, and the tax rate accounts for more than 60%. According to government figures, tobacco tax revenue is expected to be about 9.4 billion yuan this year, an increase of more than 1 billion yuan from the previous year’s 8.08 billion yuan.
Tang Xiuqi: Increasing cigarette tax is not a means to increase warehouse revenue
The Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health has been advocating for an increase in cigarette taxes, and recently urged the government to significantly increase tobacco taxes by 75%, increasing the average retail price of a pack of cigarettes to HK$115.5, making cigarette taxes account for 75.76%. Committee Chairman Tang Xiuqi emphasized to “Sing Tao” that tobacco tax is a public health policy, not a means of increasing treasury revenue, and its effectiveness in promoting smokers to quit smoking needs to be valued. Citing data, he said that after the government raised cigarette taxes last year, the number of calls to quit smoking hotlines has increased by about 30%. He also said that young people are sensitive to the price of cigarettes, and rising cigarette prices will reduce their incentives to try smoking. He pointed out that there are no complete statistics on the overall cigarette tax revenue and the smoking rate in Hong Kong last year. He believed that it is premature to interpret the reduction in tax revenue as the problem of illicit cigarettes becoming more rampant.
Tang Xiuqi agreed that the government needs to strengthen the crackdown on the circulation of illicit cigarettes, and suggested that the Tobacco Control Office, Customs and the police cooperate to improve the effectiveness of law enforcement. He proposed to refer to Singapore’s practice of adding identifiable labels to each duty-paid cigarette, with the production cost borne by tobacco manufacturers. He believed that the measure was feasible and less difficult to implement than other policies. As for financial benefits, he pointed out that in addition to tax revenue, reducing smoking rates would also help ease public health expenditures, which would also benefit government revenue and expenditure in the long run.
Newspaper vendors, whose main source of income is tobacco sales, have reservations about increasing the cigarette tax. Lam Chang-fu, chairman of the Hong Kong News Vendors Association, told Sing Tao that last year’s tax increase hit newspaper vendors particularly hard, and in turn made the sale of unduty-paid cigarettes commonly known as “rat cigarettes” even more rampant. He pointed out that most grassroots smokers cannot afford cigarettes with a 75% tax rate, so they turn to private cigarettes that only cost about NT$30, which in disguise makes it more difficult to do business at newsstands.
Hong Kong will ban the import and sale of heated cigarettes from 2022. Lin Changfu believes that relaxing the re-sale of e-cigarettes will be helpful to the government treasury and merchants. He said that developing legal sales channels and collecting relevant taxes will benefit the government and also provide cigarettes. People provide alternatives. He also pointed out that the number of illicit cigarettes intercepted by customs has continued to increase in recent years, reflecting that the government’s law enforcement is still ineffective. He suggested adding traceable labels to cigarette packages to reduce the opportunity for tobacco tax avoidance.
The “Long-term Tobacco Policy Concern Group” recently went to the Government Headquarters to submit a submission opposing the increase in cigarette taxes. The concern group pointed out that after the tobacco tax was raised, the situation of illegal cigarettes was out of control, and the relevant WHO recommendations were only general recommendations, not specific to Hong Kong or a certain region. They believed that reducing the smoking population is the real tobacco control KPI, and one should not blindly follow the WHO recommendations. , pushing smokers into the black market for illegal cigarettes.
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Legislative Council wholesale and retail member Shao Jiahui.Data pictures
Shao Jiahui: Increasing cigarette taxes will not help the warehouse
Legislative Council wholesale and retail member Shao Jiahui also does not support increasing cigarette taxes. He pointed out that after the increase last year, the actual tax revenue from March to December fell by about 1 billion compared with the previous year, only 4.26 billion yuan was collected, which was incompatible with the government budgeted revenue of 9.4 billion. far cry. He believes that the reduction in taxation does not mean that the smoking rate has dropped. On the contrary, it has aggravated the problem of smokers buying unpaid cigarettes. He also pointed out that increasing cigarette taxes will not help the treasury. What is more important is to start cracking down on illicit cigarettes and strengthen the regulation of tobacco taxation.
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2024-02-22 23:00:47
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