Health taxes databases

WHO has been publishing standardized data on tobacco taxes and prices on a biennial basis since 2008. This database forms part of the WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic and has become an invaluable tool to researchers, policy makers and advocates to track and compare country, regional and global progress on the implementation of tobacco taxes, and to identify needs for tobacco tax reforms. As WHO scales up technical assistance on alcohol and sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes, buoyed by the significant interest in this area by Member States, data collected for the first time on alcohol and SSBs provide a panorama of current taxes applied on identified alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and disseminates standardized indicators of tax design and tax level. This work aims to help understand the global implementation of taxes on alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, measure their level and identify areas of improvement.