Thailand’s Finance Ministry is planning to propose cutting the tobacco excise tax by 25% to lessen the impact on farmers.
Deputy finance minister Santi Prompat said that the previous government’s raising of the tax affected 20,000 farmers. The new proposed tax cut calls for the new levy to be 5-6 times higher than the THB0.05 mark but still lower than the current rate of THB0.10.
According to Prompat, the previous government approved hiking the excise tax on tobacco to ThB0.10 per gram from THB0.05 to narrow the retail price gap between factory-made and RYO cigarettes after many smokers switched to RYO, which had become cheaper after a new excise tax structure took effect in September 2017.