Taxes on sugary drinks reassessed? A parliamentary report presented this Wednesday, June 22 to the National Assembly and reported by The Parisian advocates increasing the “soda tax”.
Created in 2012 under Nicolas Sarkozy, this taxation of sugary drinks was designed to fight childhood overweight and obesity. It resulted in a tax of €7.53 per hectolitre, or 2.51 cents per can of soda, recalls Le Parisien.
4.6 cents for a 33 cL can
Four years later, the idea of revising this tax upwards emanates more from a desire to see more clearly in the “maquis of taxes on agri-food products”, explains the daily. In other words, certain products such as margarine would benefit from tax relief of 20% to 5.5% offset by an increase in the “soda tax” on certain products – defined later if the report is adopted in the National Assembly. Implicitly, the objective would be to boost the purchasing power of the French on basic products, while dissuading the consumption of certain products rich in sugars and/or fat and therefore bad for health.
What would be the magnitude of this increase in the “soda” tax? It could climb to €21.47 per hectolitre, or 4.6 cents for a 33 cl can. A rebalancing that would bring 590 million euros per year to the State.
Too sweet products also in the hot seat?
Other avenues are being studied, such as the increase in VAT to 20% on chocolate bars, considered as “a snack product containing particularly high quantities of sugars and saturated fatty acids”, according to the terms of the report taken up by Le Parisien.
Finally, another solution considered would be to surcharge products exceeding a certain sugar level.
Here again, all the terms of the debate remain to be clarified.
If the report passes the Assembly, the proposals will be discussed as part of the 2017 finance bill debated this fall.
Read also: Soda: we consume more of it everywhere in the world except in France
Obesity: one in three French people for a tax on fatty products
