Vape Club's managing director Dan Marchant is urging HMRC to “reconsider the rate” of the “grossly underestimated figure” for the new Vaping Products Duty (VPD) tax.
New tax starts October 2026
The Vaping Products Duty starts on 1 October 2026, adding a flat excise tax of 22p per millilitre (£2.20 per 10ml) plus VAT on all e-liquids. The flat rate will create great variables of price changes across vaping products with different volumes.
Marchant said: “This will punish vapers who feel value for money is important in their purchase decisions, and is a blow to achieving smoking cessation for those that need it most in lower income households.”
Cebr analysis findings
A new research report, The impact of the Vaping Products Duty, a Cebr analysis, found that HMRC figures to achieve the cost above are based on flawed data, underestimating consumption figures by more than half. The VPD is likely to greatly reduce the appeal of vaping as a smoking cessation tool, despite its effectiveness versus alternative nicotine replacement therapies.
Vaping prices rise around 11 times faster than cigarette prices — a volume-weighted 44% increase on vaping products against 4% on cigarettes. Refillable e-liquid rises 75%; prefilled pods 12%. An additional 1.5 billion cigarettes are predicted to be consumed per year — a big win for Big Tobacco.
Industry calls for rethink
Marchant commented: “The foundations for the ‘Impact of the proposed Vaping Products Duty’ research report were laid back when the Vaping Products Duty was announced. Decades of experience serving vapers and quitting smokers told us that things just didn’t seem quite right.”
“One of the main justifications for the duty is to avoid youth take-up, and to achieve this the vape duty broadly mirrors that of the tobacco duty. However we feel this methodology is misplaced — tobacco duty does not exist to only deter youth uptake, but uptake for all age groups. This works for tobacco because it’s harmful to anyone who uses it, regardless of age.”
“However this is not the case for vaping and measures to deter youth uptake should not also deter adult smokers from switching. We 100% agree that youth uptake needs to be prevented, but there are far more effective ways to achieve this than a blanket tax which will have detrimental effects on adult smokers making the switch.”
“We are under no illusions that we are going to ‘stop the duty’ but want HMRC to reconsider the rates. The costs and repercussions of the duty — on smokers, vapers, national health and the economy — are just too high to bear and are based on a grossly underestimated figure.”
“We are fast approaching 2030 and if the country is going to have any chance of realising a smokefree generation it makes no sense to be introducing measures which will backfire and actually increase smoking rates. This cannot possibly be the government’s goal. I urge the treasury and HMRC to sit down with us and talk about this research and how we can avoid as many negative outcomes as possible.”
“I call on the government to work with the industry, to put the people first, and to find a sensible solution that ensures the Vape Duty will not undo a decade of public health benefit, and that as many people as possible remain or become smokefree.”
