Tobacco Taxation at Sub-National (state) Level in Post-1990 India: a dataset from the DEEP project [Deciphering an Epidemic of Epic Proportion: the role of state and tobacco industry in tobacco control in post-liberalised India (1990-2017)]

This dataset provides tax rates (Value Added Tax, Entry Tax, Luxury Tax) on tobacco products in 10 Indian States (Karnataka, Kerala, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Bihar, West Bengal, Meghalaya, and Nagaland) for the period of 1990-2017. The dataset provides tax rates for three major categories of tobacco products (cigarettes, bidis, and smokeless products) month-wise starting from the financial year April 1990 - March 1991 till the financial year April 2016 - March 2017. These data were collected from relevant statutes, notifications, public notices by concerned state governments typically available through state government commercial tax department websites occasionally supplemented by free internet searches for specific documents not available or accessible on state government websites.The following points will help better understand the dataset and its strengths and limitations:The numerical data in each cell refers to the rate of the tax on given tobacco product that prevailed at a given time (month/year). The data provided is a decimal fraction and is to be multiplied by 100 to derive the percentage e.g. 0.01 in the dataset imply 1% of tax rate.The Value Added Tax (VAT) Acts were enacted in Indian states in early 2000s and generally came to be implemented around the year 2005. In our dataset, we capture the VAT rates on tobacco from March 2005 onward. However, the actual implementation could have been a little earlier in some states. VAT rates are generally provided till March 2017 after which, VAT was subsumed in the Goods and Services Tax.In case of the Entry Tax and the Luxury Tax, only some of the states levied such taxes on tobacco products. In case of the states that levied these taxes on tobacco, we have captured data from March 1990 onward as our study period was 1990-2017. This does not necessarily imply that such taxes were not levied on tobacco before March 1990.Blank cells or cells with missing values denote that the given tax type was not levied on the given tobacco products for that time point.At times, additional tax or surcharge was levied under the VAT Act in addition to the VAT rate for tobacco. The dataset provides the VAT rates that are inclusive of such additional tax or surcharge and in such cases, a comment clarifying this has been inserted in the dataset.At times, different smokeless tobacco products had different tax rates levied on them. In such cases, we have generally indicated the highest tax rate in the dataset while including a comment clarifying the different rates for different smokeless tobacco items.Rarely, the VAT rate was levied in form of a fixed amount per certain number of products (cigarette sticks) instead of a fixed percentage of the product value. In such instance, we have inserted a comment in the dataset clarifying this.We found it complex to track all the changes done in tax rates on tobacco over time under these three tax categories. There were several amendments to the tax legislations and several notifications issued under these tax legislations regarding changes in tax rates on tobacco. It is likely that we missed out capturing all these changes, especially as some of the notifications were missing from the government websites. So, there are likely to be errors in terms of the tax rates and the exact period for which specific rates prevailed. We tried our best to capture data from authoritative sources as much as possible given the limited time and resources we had.This dataset was produced as part of the broader research project that explored the political economy of tobacco, titled “Deciphering an epidemic of epic proportion: the role of state and tobacco industry in tobacco control in post-liberalised India (1990-2017)”. We thank the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance for funding this project through the Intermediate (Clinical and Public Health) Fellowship awarded to Upendra Bhojani (IA/CPHI/17/1/503346). While collecting these data, an earlier document compiling tax rates on tobacco at state level by Mr. Gaurav Gupta of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids for the period 2010-2011 to 2016-2017 served as a useful reference. We thank him for sharing such resource with us.