These days, when one looks back at the stratospheric rates of income tax levied in the 1970s it’s commonplace to sympathise with those who sought to avoid such punitive taxation. If you were subject to such rates then you’d do your best to limit your exposure to them wouldn’t you? Of course you would.
Something similar may now be said about the levels of tax imposed upon alcohol and tobacco. More than 75% of the cost of a packet of cigarettes goes to the Treasury. It’s hard to think of many other products punished so severely.
And we all know, I think, that tobacco taxes are going to increase regardless of this election’s outcome. It’s for our own, and the country’s, good you understand and anyway won’t you please think of the poor beleaguered suffering children?
Nevertheless, it’s a bit of a surprise to see a supposedly right-of-centre think tank calling for ever more punitive rates of taxation to be levied upon the country’s long-suffering (in terms of tax, not their habit) tobacco enthusiasts.
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