Thursday September 1, 2016, the Public Treasury proposed a cost-effective way to fightobesityand wanted to impose a tax on junk food. In response to this suggestion, the Minister of Economy and Finance Michel Sapin declared that “there is no question of creating taxes while the government is trying to lower taxes, to abolish taxes”. Christian Eckert, Secretary of State in charge of the Budget, told him at the RTL microphone that “there is no question of grouping all the taxes into a single tax which would take calories into account”.
Obesity, a public health problem and a significant social cost
To fight obesity, the organization proposed to act, among other things, on behavioral taxation and to introduce a tax proportional to the level of calories or the nutritional quality of a food.
“An interesting option could be to tax products beyond a certain level of calories, or according to their nutritional quality, as was done in Mexico from 2014”, explained the institution. But it could be interesting to increase VAT on products “considered harmful to health”.
The body recalls that excess weight causes harmful health consequences. It increases the risk of contracting a chronic disease and is responsible for 13% of deaths in Europe.
“The obese or overweight people contribute to a higher share of health expenditure (56% for city care and probably more in hospitals). The social cost of overweight was around € 20 billion (1% of GDP) in 2012, an amount comparable to that ofalcohol and tobacco », Recalled the Public Treasury.
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