E-cig, heat not burn excise opposed

The EU Commission believes that excise tax should not be applied to electronic cigarettes or heat-not-burn (HNB) products, according to a story by Sarantis Michalopoulos for euractiv.com.

Given the tobacco market’s shift away from traditional tobacco and toward new generation products such as e-cigarettes and HNB devices, and in the light of new developments in the illegal tobacco trade, the EU Council asked the Commission in March 2016 to come up with a proposal on the revision of the Tobacco Excise Directive.

This legislation sets out harmonised rules on the rates of excise duty applied to manufactured tobacco across the EU.

E-cigarettes and other novel products are not covered by the directive and the member states asked the Commission to conduct a study to explore the possibility of imposing excise taxes on them.

But, due to the availability of only limited data on these products, the Commission decided not to propose a harmonised approach until further information was available.

The Commission said that it would re-examine the situation in the next regular report on tobacco taxation, which is due in 2019.