Responding to Your Cigarette Tax Scorecard Questions
As many of you may know, the Economics for Health team released the fourth edition of the Cigarette Tax Scorecard, with a launch webinar at the end of 2025. We were very excited to see the level of engagement with the Scorecard, including in terms of the technical aspects, as well as the broader findings and their policy implications. Below, you will find some of your questions and responses from two of the Scorecard authors. We begin by exploring some of the methodological questions, followed by country-specific inquiries, global implications, and finally, suggestions for future analyses.
Please reach out to economicsforhealth@jh.edu with any additional questions or comments that you may have about the Cigarette Tax Scorecard or any of our other work.
Weighted average overall score by population size would move the average closer to the countries with huge populations such as China and India. We argue that keeping the simple average informs the reader better about the global context, because the rubrics are based on taxation in individual countries, rather than population size.
2. Why are 2018 PPP prices particularly used and not another base, like 2024?
We use 2018 PPP prices because the first edition of the Cigarette Tax Scorecard report was based on 2018 data. Having the 2018 PPP prices for all periods allows us to compare more meaningfully and clearly over time. We did, however, include the 2024 PPP price ranges in the pricing rubric in the Scorecard document as an easy point of comparison for readers.
3. Why is the minimum price not a part of the Scorecard criteria?
Minimum prices are relatively rare, so it was not logical to include them in the criteria. We should, however, see effective minimum price policies indirectly reflected in higher price scores.
4. Does the report itself document that price increases have been caused more by industry price increases, rather than by tobacco taxes?
We do not document this rigorously in the report, so it is based more on common sense here. There are two major mechanisms for changing prices: the industry’s price strategies and taxes. So, if there’s a price increase without tax increases, it’s almost certainly from the industry’s pricing. All that said, we started to get at this in a recent article with our colleagues at the CDC Foundation (see Ali et al.), and we are working on a new paper that decomposes these changes more systematically. Stay tuned!
5. Do you recommend using a weighted average when calculating average price in the market or a simple average?
We would almost always recommend weighted average prices because price distribution can be rather skewed in a lot of countries.
6. Would you say that the increase in the Scorecard regarding Brazil's tax structure is attributable to the current tax reform, even if it hasn't been fully implemented?
Brazil is at a crossroads on tobacco tax, with immense opportunity for progress. If the new reform includes sufficiently high tax rates and a mechanism to stay ahead of inflation and real income growth, it will be on track to be among the world’s tobacco tax high performers like it was in the middle of the last decade. Check out our fact sheet that tracks these changes over time.
7. In Pakistan, the three-tier excise duty was reduced to two, and some are advocating to further simplify to one tier to minimize tax evasion and illicit trade. Meanwhile, the tobacco industry perpetuates the myth that increasing taxes would shift legal production to illicit trade. What are your thoughts on this situation?
The evidence is unequivocal that uniform tax structures, based mostly on specific taxes are superior in terms of 1) driving up prices of the cheapest brands; 2) shrinking price dispersion/diffusion; 3) simplifying tax administration; and 4) generating new tax revenues. We are confident that this would be the case for Pakistan. In response to the illicit trade challenges, efforts to control the supply chain are critical, and clearly Pakistan’s government is paying attention to this issue as they apply their new cigarette track-and-trace system to an increasing proportion of companies. The government needs to continue these efforts and to punish companies that are not playing by the rules.
8. How can the WHO FCTC be used to encourage governments to do more on tobacco tax, especially Articles 6 and 15 which are critical to the topic?
Article 6 of the FCTC has been wonderful to motivate FCTC Parties to improve their taxation. Furthermore, the official guidelines have been and continue to be a fantastic resource for governments. Similarly, Article 15 has helped governments to conceptualize better how to manage their supply chains and it developed into its own treaty, the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products. Our close colleagues and collaborators, Guillermo Paraje and the Universidad Adolfo Ibanez team did a great job showing the importance of the FCTC in improving tobacco control, including tobacco taxation.
9. Have you compared changes in the tax index over time with changes in adult quit rates across countries?
We have done this with consumption and tax revenues but not adult quit rates since those rates are not reliably available across a large number of countries. We’ll keep our eyes open for a new dataset that captures quit rates across time and space better and would allow for this type of analysis.
10. Can you do a crude estimate of foregone government revenue as a result of industry price increases rather than government-implemented price/tax increases?
We are going to make this calculation and share our findings soon. We loved this idea—thank you!