Greece cautious on new smoking taxation

Greece is proposing to find communal crushed connected the European Commission’s caller connection for a ample summation successful taxes connected cigarettes, tobacco products and nicotine products successful bid to debar further maturation successful smuggling and forestall the Greek tobacco manufacture from being affected.

Speaking astatine the ECOFIN Council of the European Union’s concern ministers, Greece’s Economy and Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis recommended, among different things, little taxes than those proposed, a longer transition period, and the imposition of taxes based connected weight and not connected the unit of the last product. The European Commission is proposing a 258% tax summation connected roll-your-own tobacco, a 139% summation connected cigarettes, and higher taxes connected physics cigarettes and heated tobacco products, which are presently taxed overmuch lower.

The inaugural concerns the revision of the Tobacco Taxation Directive and the simultaneous instauration of a caller tax (Tobacco Excise Duty Own Resource – TEDOR). It was launched aft unit from chiefly Northern European countries, and Taxation Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra precocious said helium hoped the EU would follow it by the summer.

Led by the Netherlands, 16 countries submitted an involution to the European Commission a fewer months ago, noting that the antithetic nationalist tax rates distort the single market. Many countries are besides calling for the directive, which dates backmost to 2011, to beryllium updated to see caller products that, they say, are peculiarly fashionable with children and young people. Italy, Greece and Romania, however, look cautious.

In his involution astatine ECOFIN, Pierrakakis welcomed the inaugural successful rule and said that based connected the Greek experience, “and, taking into relationship our geographical location, it has been observed successful the past that the summation successful these tax rates leads to an summation successful smuggling.”