La tassazione del tabacco riscaldato in Italia: dal tempo di consumo al tabacco contenuto

In the European Union, heat-not-burn products indirectly fall under the EU Directive 64/2011, which regulates the taxation structure of manufactured tobacco within a well-defined supranational regulatory framework. For many countries, this has led to a taxation system consistent with that provided for traditional tobacco products. On the contrary, in Italy the taxation of this kind of products is based on a particular equivalence which does not reward the lower tobacco content — and, therefore, the lower harm — present in these new products. Our paper analyses the current legislation in Italy, proposing a reform that overcomes the current system of equivalence in favour of the actual tobacco content. The resulting reduction in tax revenue should be recovered by increasing the total incidence on traditional cigarettes and acting on the level of the specific excise duty. This would reconcile the objective of health protection with that of revenue, while leaving the price gap between the two markets unchanged.