{"id":377437,"date":"2020-02-26T14:52:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T12:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=377437"},"modified":"2020-02-26T14:52:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T12:52:00","slug":"south-africa-wants-to-tax-e-cigarettes-and-plastic-straws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/budget-speech\/377437\/south-africa-wants-to-tax-e-cigarettes-and-plastic-straws\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa wants to tax e-cigarettes and plastic straws"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The South African government may start taxing e-cigarettes and plastic straws as it ramps up green and health taxes to boost revenue and change behavior.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to doubling a levy on plastic bags from April, the government will consult on extending this charge to all single-use plastics for retail consumption including straws, utensils and packaging, from 2021, the National Treasury said in the budget review tabled in Cape Town on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The government will start taxing heated tobacco products immediately and intends to introduce a levy on electronic cigarettes next year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGlobally, policymakers are looking at regulating and taxing these products due to concerns about their health effect,\u201d the Treasury said.<\/p>\n<p>These are some of the other green and health tax measures in the budget:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The carbon tax rate will increase by 5.6% for the 2020 calendar year.<\/li>\n<li>Government proposes increasing the vehicle emissions rate for passenger cars to R120 ($7.90) per gram of carbon dioxide per emissions kilometer, and 160 rand for a double cab truck from April.<\/li>\n<li>The levy on incandescent light bulbs will increase to R10.00 rand from R8.00<br \/>\nThe plastic bags levy will increase to 25 cents from 12 cents.<br \/>\nExcise duties on all alcohol and tobacco products, excluding traditional African beer, will increase by between 4.4% and 7.5% and the general fuel levy will rise by 16 cents.<br \/>\nThe government is also preparing an environmental fiscal reform paper.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/budget-speech\/377391\/beer-wine-and-cigarette-prices-to-increase-from-wednesday-in-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Beer, wine and cigarette prices to increase from Wednesday in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South African government may start taxing e-cigarettes and plastic straws as it ramps up green and health taxes to boost revenue and change behavior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":377441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13716],"tags":[14749,26],"class_list":["post-377437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-budget-speech","tag-budget2020","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377443,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377437\/revisions\/377443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}