2015 opened under the banner of important innovations for the world of tobacco and electronic cigarettes and for those who use them. A real breath of fresh air for the Treasury. Following the entry into force of the Tobacco Legislative Decree, the Customs and Monopolies Agency reorganized the excise duties through the publication of two resolutions dedicated to tobacco and two others aimed at determining the consumption tax on inhaled liquids.
As for the "blondes", the price of a package will increase by an average of 5,5%, for example the Marlboro Gold will go from 5 euros to 5,20 euros while the Touch version is now indicated at a price of 4,8 euro, compared to the previous 4,6 euro. The only exception is represented by the John Player Specials which remain unchanged at 4 euros. Price increases are in sight, but it's not a surprise, even for cigars, cigarillos and fine tobacco.
If for tobacco it was a simple price increase, the surprise came instead for the world of electronic cigarettes, shaken by a real earthquake, expected by sector operators, but not in the dimensions in which it actually arrived.
While awaiting a definitive provision on the consumption tax applicable to these products, inextricably linked to the measurement of a phantom equivalence between electronic cigarettes and traditional cigarettes, in fact, the warning shocks were revealed with the first provisional decision of ADM (expired on last January 20), which set the rate at €3,33 for every 10ml of liquid per refill.
Last week the measurement, through a mysterious machine (purchased for the occasion), which was supposed to make it possible to equate the "vape" of inhaled liquids, to the puff of a traditional cigarette, providing the managers and technicians of the ADM laboratories the data necessary to measure the equivalence between traditional cigarettes and e-cigarettes. The result was the final determination of the Customs and Monopolies Agency which set the tax at €3,7344 for every 10ml top-up. Translated into real numbers, a tax of 10 euros plus VAT will be applied to each refill of 3,7344 milliliter e-cigs (therefore the current price will increase by about 4,50 euros per refill), an increase which, according to operators industry, could lead to consumer price increases of 150%.
Hence, evidently, the bewilderment of the National Association of Electronic Smoke, Anafe-Confindustria, whose president Massimiliano Mancini underlined that "The rule issued by the Adm unfortunately denotes absolute indifference towards the industrial reality of the sector and also towards the indications of the Parliament of reduce the tax burden and put a stop to litigation, which will instead explode, thus continuing to do damage to companies and state coffers. We can only appeal to Prime Minister Renzi, to Economy Minister Padoan and to Parliament – Mancini continued – to whom we ask why they allow this persecution”.
Anafe-Confindustria, as feared for months, reiterates that “this provision and the value of this tax will completely destroy the competitiveness of a sector by now considered an Italian excellence all over the world. Provision issued on the basis of discretionary interpretations of technical standards and based on questionable protocols for calculating the average consumption of traditional cigarettes and inhaled liquids without scientific basis".
Confusion denounced by Anafe-Confindustria probably generated by an erroneous framing of the e-cig phenomenon by the legislator who, since the beginning of what seemed to be a real boom and which dates back to the end of 2012, in seeing the explosion of The trend of electronic smoking has perhaps feared (?) a massive switch of traditional tobacco consumers to the electronic cigarette, which, without any doubt, would have led to a bloody drop in tax revenues for the State coffers (since liquids were not subjected to excise).
The only way to keep tax revenues unchanged was to place inhaled liquids under the aegis of the Customs and Monopolies Agency, justifying the action through an imaginative and incorrect equation. But the reality today looks very different. The two products are not comparable in the slightest (the only substance that inhaled liquids and tobacco have in common is nicotine which is completely absent in various liquids) and those revenues on which the State believed it could count, now that the risk is the collapse of the entire sector, they risk never arriving.
