Public Health Taxation
Taxes on alcohol and tobacco have long been an important means of raising revenues for public spending in many countries but there is increasing interest in using taxes on these, and other unhealthy products, to achieve public health goals. A tax may be considered a 'health' tax on the basis that it raises revenue for health spending and/or is intended to achieve health aims (e.g. behavioural change among suppliers or consumers of health-damaging products), but there is likely to be a tension between these goals in terms of policy design.
An example of this was the Scottish Government's 'Public Health Supplement', a levy on large retailers selling alcohol and tobacco.
Our work in the area of innovative health taxation includes two recent published articles:
Policy lessons from health taxes: a systematic review of empirical studies (2017) BMC Public Health
Hard to avoid but difficult to sustain: Scotland's innovative health tax on large retailers selling tobacco and alcohol (2016) Milbank Quarterly
Funding:
This work has been funded by CRUK.
Contact:
Dr Mark Hellowell
