Increased Cigarette Taxes Increases Revenue for Korean Government

Just like in the US the Korean government has found that the demonization of smokers is an effective way to raise revenue.  Then again another way to look at it is that smokers put more demand on the health care system and thus should be expected to pay more:

When the administration calculated its 2016 budget, it predicted that total cigarette consumption (shipping) would be 3.46 billion packs, or 600 million (21%) more than this year. Cigarette consumption has fallen by 34% since taxes per pack were raised by 2,000 won (US$1.67) at the beginning of the year, but revenues were projected to increase by 2.854 trillion won (US$2.38 billion) over the year, including national and local taxes.Yet in the administration’s calculations, the projected 2016 shipments were down by just 21.2% from the annual average of 4.39 billion packs for the four years from 2010 to 2013. Critics are now charging that the goal of the cigarette tax hike was not to discourage smoking as claimed – but to raise more tax revenues.  [Hankyoreh]

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