TobTaxy News
27 March 2012 - UK Increases Tobacco Taxation
The UK government recently announced that cigarette taxes have been raised 5% above inflation - as recommended by ASH UK and 90 other health organisations in the UK. The same tax increase has also been administered on hand rolled tobacco.
In practical terms, this means that a packet of 20 Marlboro has gone up from £7.09 (8.48 EUR) to £7.46 (8.93 EUR).
13 October 2011 - Turkey Increases Tobacco Taxation
Prof Elif Dagli from the National Coalition on Tobacco or Health in Turkey announced that, following a World Health Organisation meeting with the Turkish Ministries of Health, Finance and Head of Health Commission of the Parliament, Turkey increased tobacco taxes to 83% on the 13 October 2011.
The most significant decision of the current tax plan is to include the taxation increase on all tobacco products, including water-pipe, cigars equally. The Turkish NGO community is grateful to Douglas Bettcher, Ayda Yurekli, Toker Erguder and all who have participated for this achievement.
**Update from the Paris Workshop***
The country working groups involved in the Paris workshop have been busy implementing their taxation knowledge into action at national level. The following have been the most prominent activities which have take place since the June 2011 workshop:
France - Press Conference in Paris
Belgium - Television interview on Flemish TV
Spain - Press Release and Fiscal Newsletter in Spain
11 June 2011 - Paris Capacity Building Workshop
TobTaxy’s first pilot capacity workshop recently took place at Hotel Novotel Vaugirard Montparnasse, Paris (6-8 June 2011). In total, over 20 attendees were present, representing a variety of interests from the tobacco control / public health community, academia and governmental offices (from countries Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain), and were trained in the intricacies of tobacco taxation and illicit trade.
Overall, participant feedback considered the two and a half day training event to be a great success. The Smoke Free Partnership is currently dissecting the evaluation of the workshop to ensure that the forthcoming four workshops in Romania, Lithuania, Ireland and Czech Republic are of an even higher standard.
The Smoke Free Partnership is interested in keeping in contact with all trainees and participants from Paris and track follow up work discussed in Paris. If you were a trainee at the event, or an interested member of the public health community, please contact stefan.callan@ersnet.org for more information – such as event presentations and further documentation that may benefit your taxation work.
Training was conducted by the Smoke Free Partnership and the Comité National Contre le Tabagisme with the help of Experts – Antoine Deutsch, Luk Joossens Nicolas Lopez and Joy Townsend and European Commission officials – Frank Van Driessche and Dalibor Mladenka.
