The British government announced its new budget, which included an expected raise in cigar taxes. Chancellor George Osborne rose the duty on all tobacco 5% above inflation, which was higher than what was originally anticipated. The new duty went into effect on March 21, 2012.
Mitchell Orchant of C.Gars Ltd provided a pretty good explanation of the real word implications of the taxes:
You may think that it doesn’t sound like much but when you factor in that many of the cigar importers absorbed industry price increases last year and are unlikely to do so again this year, I think that the overall increase is likely to be HUGE.
Perhaps the reality will look like this: 5% duty increase plus 3.4% inflation, plus industry price increase and of course plus 20% VAT on the lot. We won’t know how much that will total to until we receive the updates from the various importers but it looks like 10-15% overall to me which for an already expensive market is fairly hefty.
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