1 Prabhat Jha ([email protected]), Centre for Global Health Research, St Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada, 2 University of Illinois, Chicago, US, 3 Propel Centre for Population Health Impact, University of Waterloo, Canada, 4 American Cancer Society, Atlanta, US, 5 National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi, 6 Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India...

In a recent contribution, H. Naito (1999) has shown that production efciency may be violated in the optimum with non-linear income taxation. Using a slightly simpler framework, this paper complements Naito's analysis in showing that production e ciency does not hold in the optimum with (i) non-linear and (ii) linear income taxation provided that second best and rst best do not coincide. These n...

Taxation of tobacco is a widely-used strategy that prompts smoking cessation among adults and reduces cigarette consumption among continuing smokers. Registered Indian tobacco use prevalence is at least double that of the rest of Canadians and is in part due to the lower cost of tobacco products purchased on reserve by Registered Indians (RIs) as they are tax exempt. Although registered Indian ...

The author defends himself against an attack by Smith and Bopp on his views on smoking and taxation. The theory that, on the grounds of equity and/or fairness, smokers should pay via taxation on tobacco for the health care costs of treating smoking-related medical conditions is discussed and shown to be defective. It is argued that the fundamental mistake that Smith and Bopp make is to confuse ...

BACKGROUND Increases in tobacco taxes are widely regarded as a highly effective strategy for reducing tobacco use and its consequences. METHODS The voluminous literature on tobacco taxes is assessed, drawing heavily from seminal and recent publications reviewing the evidence on the impact of tobacco taxes on tobacco use and related outcomes, as well as that on tobacco tax administration. RE...

Tax levels have important effects on cigarette prices and tax revenues. Over 70p of every pound spent on tobacco goes to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, yielding over 5 billion pounds. But the value of tobacco tax revenues have generally fallen--by 1986 they were 10% lower than at their peak in 1965, and tobacco revenue is becoming a smaller proportion of total tax receipts. The impact of a co...

BACKGROUND The distribution of cigarette prices has rarely been studied and compared under different tax structures. Descriptive evidence on price distributions by countries can shed light on opportunities for tax avoidance and brand switching under different tobacco tax structures, which could impact the effectiveness of increased taxation in reducing smoking. OBJECTIVE This paper aims to de...