Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Recent tobacco tax rate adjustment and its potential impact on tobacco control in China
  1. Teh-wei Hu1,2,
  2. Zhengzhong Mao3,
  3. Jian Shi4
  1. 1University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
  2. 2Center for International Tobacco Control, Public Health Institute, Oakland, California, USA
  3. 3Department of Health Economics, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
  4. 4Research Institute of Taxation Service, State Administration of Taxation, Beijing
  1. Correspondence to Professor Teh-wei Hu, School of Public Health, Room 241 University Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; thu{at}berkeley.edu

Abstract

Objectives To compare the new tobacco tax structure effective from May 2009 with the tax structure before May 2009 and to analyse its potential impact.

Methods Published government statistics and estimated price elasticities of the demand for cigarettes are used to estimate the impact of the new tax rate adjustment on cigarette consumption and population health.

Results The new adjustment increased the tax rate by 11.7% points at the producer price level. Converting this 11.7% point increase to the retail price level would mean an increase of 3.4% points in the retail price tax rate. Thus, China's new cigarette tax rate at the retail level would be 43.4% instead of the previous 40%.

Conclusions The primary motivation for the recent Chinese government tobacco tax adjustment is to raise additional government revenue. Because the additional ad valorem tax has not yet been transferred to smokers, there is no public health benefit. It is hoped that the Chinese government will pass along these taxes to the retail price level, which would result in between 640 000 and two million smokers quitting smoking and between 210 000 and 700 000 quitters avoiding smoking-related premature death.

  • Tobacco taxation
  • impact
  • China

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Footnotes

  • Funding US National Institutes of Health, Fogarty International Center Grant (R01-TW05938).

  • Competing interest None.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.