Fat cats hike tobacco taxes

The leader of New Zealand’s NZ First party, Winston Peters, has blamed “fat people” for the latest hikes in tobacco taxes, according to a stuff.co.nz story.

Parliament recently sat ‘under urgency’ to rush through legislation raising tobacco taxes by 10 per cent a year for the next four years, a move voted for by every party except NZ First.

Associate Health Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga said the increases would save lives and prevent young people taking up ‘a deadly smoking habit’.

But Peters said the government should put as much effort behind tackling the “tsunami of obesity” in the country.

And he blamed the tax hike on “fat people sitting in their ivory towers telling smokers what to do”.

Peters, a smoker, said the government was picking on low-income people by singling out smokers – “people who are not allowed to have any freedom to enjoy something that is legal without being hit hard in the pocket and made to feel guilty”.

“The government is charging multinationals less than half one percent taxation while thumping smokers with a tax which will bring in $425 million over four years,” he said.

The increase in excise tax was expected to boost the government’s coffers by $425 million over four years, and cost the average smoker (someone who smokes 10.6 cigarettes a day) an extra $1,198 a year, according to the ACT party’s leader David Seymour.

That takes the total cost of excise taxes for the average smoker to $3,786 a year. The tax increase will take the cost of a packet of 20 cigarettes to about $32 by 2020.

Seymour said the government should have delivered a tax cut instead and made “a bold and innovative health policy change” by legalising electronic cigarettes.

But Seymour voted for the legislation because of the ACT’s confidence and supply agreement with the National party.