Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education

This technical manual aims to help governments maximize the benefits that they can receive from higher tobacco taxes by identifying a set of best practices for tobacco taxation. This is one of several available or forthcoming products that focus on tobacco taxation, including: the forthcoming monograph on the economics of tobacco and tobacco control being jointly produced by WHO and the US National Cancer Institute (NCI); the handbook on the effectiveness of tobacco tax and price policies forthcoming in the tobacco control handbook series produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC); and the series of reports on tobacco taxation produced by the Bloomberg Global Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use (BI).

These products differ in their breadth and depth, as well as their target audiences. The IARC handbook, for example, will provide an in-depth review of the global research evidence on the impact of tobacco taxation and price related policies on tobacco use, while the NCI/WHO monograph provides a broader review of the global evidence on the public health and economic impact of a range of tobacco control policies and other interventions, with an emphasis on impact in low and middle-income countries. In contrast, most of the BI reports are focused on country-specific evidence and on estimating the potential impact of increased tobacco taxes on tobacco use, preventable deaths, and revenues in a given country. This technical manual aims to provide more practical guidance on tax structure and tax administration issues for tax administrators and other government officials interested in increasing tobacco product taxes. Taken together, these and other materials provide a complementary and comprehensive picture of the economics of tobacco, tobacco taxation, and tobacco control.