The Fiscal Policies for Health (TAX) unit provides strategic leadership, capacity building and specialized technical assistance in the field of fiscal measures for health, particularly on excise taxation on tobacco, alcohol and sugar-sweetened beverage products. In addition, the TAX unit leads WHOs work on the development of tools, normative evidence, and market surveillance to provide best practice guidance for countries on how to use fiscal measures to improve health, reduce healthcare costs and generate a revenue stream for development.
Building on its strong expertise and track record advising Member States on tobacco taxation, the TAX team in the Health Promotion Department serves as the overall coordinator on health taxes work within WHO, building on lessons learned from tobacco taxation work. The unit works across a wide range of countries, including high tobacco burden countries like China, India and Indonesia, as well as other countries such as across Africa where the tobacco epidemic presents a clear and present public health risk.
This report provides an assessment of taxes applied to alcoholic beverages at the global level. It qualitatively compares their design and provides estimates...
This report provides a global assessment of taxes applied to sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). It describes and qualitatively compares their design and...
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All →This paper measured the economic cost of smoking-attributable diseases and found that the economic cost of smoking totalled US$1436 billion in 2012.
This study finds that significantly higher tobacco taxes will be needed to achieve Healthy China 2030 target for reduced smoking even after the implementation...
This monograph examines the current research and evidence base surrounding the economics of tobacco control—including tobacco use, tobacco growing, manufacturing...
The report sets forth the public health, economic, and anti-poverty case for higher tobacco taxes; shows how some countries have already delivered ambitious...
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