Analysis of substance use and its relation to the tax policy of the Czech Republic

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Addictive substances have been part of our lives since historical times. For the Czech Republic, this is especially true of the consumption of cigarettes and alcohol. It has long since been proven that these substances are harmful for the human organism and addiction to such substances has far-reaching impacts on the social and economic life of people. On the other hand, revenues to state budgets arising from the taxation of these substances are significant in every country around the world, and to find a balance between the prevention of their use and the revenues of the state is a problem faced by every government. AIM: The aim of this paper is to focus on the consumption of alcohol and cigarettes in the Czech Republic and ascertain its impacts on the revenues of the Czech Republic. METHODS: The sources of data for this research were publicly available from individual ministries of the Czech Republic and from the Czech Statistical Office. Statistical methods were used for the data analysis and interpretation of the findings, including quantitative research, in which basic types of dependency were demonstrated and basic hypotheses were tested. RESULTS: The results have shown that there is a dependency between the number of smokers and excise tax on cigarettes and that there is a dependency between tax revenues from beer and the average wage in the Czech Republic. CONCLUSIONS: This shows that the amount of excise tax does not affect substance use in the Czech Republic and these prevention policies are not effective in the Czech setting. On the other hand, a single significant increase in the excise tax rate would perhaps help in the area of prevention but it would not benefit the state treasury of the Czech Republic, as the impact of a higher tax rate on state revenues would be cancelled out by a drop in consumption. © 2019, Sdruzeni SCAN. All rights reserved.