To make nutritional taxation more effective in the fight against obesity, the Council of Compulsory Levies (CPO) recommends Thursday to extend it to other products than sugary or sweetened drinks and to increase the scales. In 2012, France introduced a tax on drinks containing added or sweetened sugars, such as sodas and sweetened fruit juices. The product, of approximately 500 million euros in 2022, is donated to Health Insurance. By increasing the price of these drinks, which thus see their sales decrease, “nutritional taxation constitutes an effective tool for improving the quality of the diet of citizens”, underlines the CPO in a note.
But “an insufficiently or badly targeted nutritional tax is nevertheless likely to have limited or even adverse effects”. The substitute products to which consumers turn are indeed “difficult to predict”, warns this body attached to the Court of Auditors, which makes recommendations. The first is to increase the scales of contributions on sugary and sweetened drinks.
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Although made progressive in 2018 according to the sugar level of the drink, “the French tax remains less ambitious than the British scale”, notes the CPO. He recommends extending the base of the tax to soy drinks or syrups, hitherto excluded, or even broadening the scope in the long term. He thus cites products with a high content of sugars such as cereals and confectionery and those containing harmful additives, provided that health savings are taken into account and not only short-term performance, and that a more alternative offer is provided. healthy and affordable.
On the other hand, the CPO considers it impractical to introduce a global tax on the nutritional quality of products based on the NutriScore or to modulate the VAT according to the nutritional impact of a product. The conclusions of an impact study of the 2018 reform, carried out by the Ministry of Health, should be unveiled in the fall, according to the CPO. Regarding alcoholic beverages, subject to taxes having generated 4.3 billion euros in revenue in 2022, the organization notes “significant differences in treatment, without consistency in terms of public health”. Thus, he notes, taxation is much more favorable for wine than for spirits, while the former is mainly consumed in the country.
