21:53 12 October 2021
Budget can gain PLN 1 bln of revenues from cigarettes and limit health damage
The Federation of Polish Entrepreneurs (FPP) considers it necessary to modify the assumptions of the proposed amendment to the excise duty act. The increase in the quota rate for both regular cigarettes and heating tobacco should be equal and amount to 10 percent. The increases should be introduced for all tobacco products at the same time, ie from 1 January 2022.
“It is difficult to understand the motives behind such different treatment of various product groups by the designer who focuses the planned increases on only one of them. This is all the more surprising as more and more scientific studies indicate lower harmfulness of using heating tobacco compared to smoking traditional cigarettes - which is confirmed by decisions and statements of public institutions, among others from the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Japan or New Zealand. When assessing the draft act in terms of public health, in its current form, it de facto discourages smokers from looking for less harmful alternatives to cigarettes, and thus condemns them to continue smoking the most harmful type of tobacco products, which are cigarettes," Łukasz Kozłowski, the Federation's chief economist Of Polish Entrepreneurs, vice president of the Center for Legislative Analysis and Economic Policy CALPE, assessed.
(WBJ)
