“Consumption tax” sounds like a party pooper, but this is not just about money; it concerns how long we live, in short: health prevention. Higher taxes should be levied on tobacco and alcohol, and for soft drinks they should be reintroduced.
This prompts the Expert Commission, which was commissioned by the federal government. On Monday it presented 66 proposals on how the statutory health insurance (GKV) could save money. Overall, the commission expects savings opportunities of 42.3 billion euros for 2027 – 1.9 billion through consumption taxes.
In three proposals the focus is on health. Because tobacco, alcohol and sugar are harmful, science agrees. Smoking, for example, significantly increases the risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. According to the German Cancer Research Center, smoking is the cause of 87,600 new cancer cases annually and about one in seven deaths. Alcohol is also closely linked to cancers, liver and cardiovascular diseases as well as traffic accidents. Excessive sugar consumption can lead to obesity and thus increase the risk of type-2 diabetes.
Thus the consumption taxes are intended to have a double effect: higher prices on spirits, cigarettes and sodas should deter people from buying, reduce the incentive for harmful behavior and thus lead to a healthier population that places less burden on the health insurance funds. In addition, the money raised by the taxes should flow back into the GKV.
Zoe Mayer, nutrition policy spokesperson for the Green Party parliamentary group, finds the idea of consumption taxes to relieve the GKV sensible: “The societal downstream costs are immense,” she told on request. She therefore supports measures that advance prevention and curb health damage. “This explicitly includes adjusting the tax rates,” said the opposition politician.
Simple to Implement
Although there are already special taxes on tobacco and spirits, the Expert Commission considers them too low. By gradually increasing the standard tax rates, the commission expects revenue of 1.2 billion euros from spirits tax and 2.9 billion from tobacco by 2029.
At the same time, the GKV would be burdened annually by 190 million euros less or 600 million euros less. Such a tax increase is considered easy to implement by the experts because it is only an adjustment of the already existing regulation.
Something different is the tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. For this, a new law would be required. Worldwide the tax has been adopted by more than 100 countries, including the USA, Mexico and Great Britain – and that for years. The WHO recommends it as a measure against obesity.
In Germany the sugar tax has repeatedly failed. Most recently, the Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein Daniel Günther (CDU) submitted a proposal to the Federal Council after his own party had rejected it at the party congress in February as “uneconomical.”
The proposal of the Commission goes in a direction similar to Günther’s. The Expert Commission wants to follow the British model and favors a producer-oriented tax. That means not the buyers of a lemonade paying, but the industry in production.
In a tiered system, the amount of the levy would be determined depending on the amount of sugar in the beverage. For a classic 0.33 liter Fritz-Kola bottle, the company would then have to pay about 10 cents in tax. The aim of this measure is to prompt reformulation — i.e., a new recipe — containing less sugar. Just like in Great Britain, where the law has been in effect since 2018. Exempt from the proposal are 100-percent fruit juices and beverages sweetened with artificial sweetener.
Ina Latendorf, nutrition policy spokesperson for the Left faction in the Bundestag, regards the sugar tax modeled on Britain as sensible, but calls for earmarking and sponsorship bans for alcohol, tobacco and sugar.
Self, CDU Is Also Considering Approval
Even from the CDU faction comes hesitant approval for a form of sugar tax. One should include a “possible taxation of highly sugary products in the overall assessment,” said Simone Borchardt, health policy spokesperson of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. That at least does not sound like the strict rejection the CDU showed at the party congress.
How much influence the very active sugar lobby will still have on the implementation of the measures of the GKV Expert Commission remains to be seen. From the Federal Ministry of Health, in response to ’s inquiry, came only that the further process remains to be awaited and that they will now “very quickly hold talks.” Health Minister Nina Warken (CDU) spoke on Monday of presenting as soon as possible a total package of the proposals.
Note to editors: In a previous version of the article, it stated that the company would have to pay about one euro in taxes for a 0.33-liter Fritz-Kola bottle. The correct amount is 10 cents. We have corrected the error.
