Is there anything we can do to fight the vape tax?
The vape tax is coming to the UK. We’re going to try and get the tax lowered but we need your help!
Why Are We Fighting To Get The Vape Tax Lowered?
As many of you will already know, there is a new duty being applied to all e-liquid-containing products which begins in October this year. It is coming up very quickly, and it is going to have a very large impact on the cost of vaping products. Compared to the current cost of e-liquid, be it in 10ml bottles, shortfills, or pre-filled pods, the vape tax is really quite significant at £2.20 + VAT, making it a total of £2.64 per 10ml of e-liquid.
Now at this stage of the game we aren’t stupid enough to believe we can make the tax go away, but we genuinely think there is a solid case for the Government to lower the amounts being levied initially. We think the amount of tax that they want to charge is far too high and it risks sending vapers right back to smoking.
We submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to HMRC to find out how they came up with the numbers, and we can see there are some genuine flaws in the calculations. We believe the Government has used incorrect figures when deciding how much tax to charge – they think vapers vape less than they actually do. But, how did this happen?
Before HMRC set out what the actual duty amount was going to be, they conducted a survey using the polling company Ipsos. This survey was supposed to be focused just on vapers and dual users (people who vape but have not fully switched away from smoking yet) and it asked them how much they vaped a week, what type of vape they used and so on.
One issue here was that they used what’s known as an access panel – a pre-vetted group of people who have registered to take part in surveys in exchange for things like shopping vouchers. However this poses a well known problem in the polling world – sometimes people might adjust their answers to maximise their rewards. For example, if you get an email explaining they want to survey vapers, people who don’t vape may pretend they do in order to get a few more rewards under their belt. Naturally this can have a big impact on the results.
In our FOI we asked HMRC what figure they had used for an average vaper’s e-liquid consumption, and this is what they said…
The average volume of e-liquid vaped per person per year is 617ml. This is a weighted average of volumes used in disposable, prefilled and refillable vapes.
To cut a long story short: we believe this is a significant underestimate for an average vaper. 617ml works out as less than 12ml per week (11.83ml to be exact) and less than 2ml per day (1.69ml). That’s less than one prefilled pod per day, or one single 10ml bottle plus less than one additional pod’s worth of e-liquid per week.
It is this number they have based their tax calculations on, and where we firmly believe the mistake has been made. Looking at ourselves, our staff who vape, and most importantly our sales data for hundreds of thousands of vapers – that amount seems far too low.
If the Government’s estimate is correct, the tax would only add around £3.17 per week to the average spend. But if we’re right in our suspicions, and in the real world the average e-liquid consumption per vaper in the UK is significantly higher, then obviously they have placed the duty level far too high. Essentially, they may have massively underestimated usage, and therefore underestimated the impact of the taxation level on each consumer.
What’s The Survey About?
In a last-ditch effort to help not just our customers, but the whole of the vaping community in the UK, we have teamed up with the UKVIA (UK Vaping Industry Association) in order to conduct a survey with as many vapers as possible and find out the real figures. We’ve also thrown in a few more questions to find out how the tax will affect you.
It takes just a few minutes to complete and is designed to find out how much e-liquid vapers really use. None of your answers will be attributable to you personally and we hope we can use the results to persuade HMRC to reconsider the amount of tax they are going to charge come October. And please be as accurate as possible – don’t underestimate or overestimate your usage, it’s extremely important we get as close to the real figure as we possibly can.
Filling it out will genuinely help us – we think we’re right in our suspicions but we can’t prove that without your help. The survey will be open until Friday 19th June. The more responses we get, the harder we are to ignore.
There’s no guarantee that we will be able to influence a reduction in the tax, but if we don’t try then it’s guaranteed the figure won’t change – so we’re giving it the best shot we can.
Why Does It Matter If The Government’s Estimate Is Wrong?
The Government promised that vaping would always remain cheaper than smoking, just like it is now. If they’ve based the tax on the assumption that people vape less than they actually do, they’ve assumed that vapers will spend less extra money than they actually will.
Here’s an example of what we mean. The Government may expect that the average vaper uses just shy of 12ml of e-liquid in one week, which would cost them approximately £3.17 extra after the tax comes in. If the average vaper actually uses 20ml, for instance, this would cost around £5.28 extra per week instead – that’s an additional £275 per year. If they use 40ml, it would cost £10.56 extra per week or £550 per year.
If vapers are forced to spend so much, some of the huge price difference between vaping and smoking will be reduced. This is important because vaping is cheaper than smoking and many vapers swapped from smoking to save money. Without that incentive, they might go back to tobacco.
What Else Can I Do?
Please share the survey or this page with other vapers you know – the more responses the survey gets, the better.
If you want to do even more to help, you could consider writing to your MP. This is especially important if you vape more than the 11.69ml of e-liquid per week that the Government thinks you use. You can use the Parliament website to find your MP’s contact details – they’re normally reachable by phone and by email and some of them run in-person meetings too.
Summing Up
We regularly publish pieces about vaping laws and legislation, and when we do, we mention this in our newsletter – signing up to our weekly email is the best way to keep on top of the latest vaping news.
If you have any questions about the vape tax, or anything else vaping-related, please get in touch with our Customer Service team and our friendly experts will be happy to help.
