Tax & Spend
Gen Z’s Clean Living Means £14 Billion in Lost ‘Sin Tax’ for UK
- UK Treasury suffers squeeze in tobacco and alcohol tax revenue
- Generational shift puts upward pressure on income tax
A customer smokes an electronic cigarette outside a pub in the Soho district of London.
Photographer: Jose Sarmento Matos/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Generation Z’s reputation for monkish living — smoking and drinking far less than their predecessors — is turning into yet another problem for the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt.
The decline of so-called “sin taxes” on tobacco and alcohol in recent decades have left a £14 billion ($17.1 billion) hole for the Treasury to fill as younger generations switch away from cigarettes to vapes and turn off the booze altogether.