MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), the country’s biggest revenue generating agency, has issued new tax guidelines and set floor prices for vaporized nicotine and non-nicotine products and novel tobacco products.
This comes after the implementation of the Vape Law that covers the importation, manufacture, sale, packaging, distribution and use of vape products.
The implementing rules and regulations of the law delineated the duties and responsibilities of involved agencies.
The BIR will have exclusive jurisdiction over taxpayer registration, floor price setting for the products and the formulation, drafting and publication of revenue regulations covering these products.
The BIR will also be in charge of ensuring that revenue stamps are not affixed on non-compliant packages and certify under oath that products are taxed and compliant with the Graphic Health Warning Law prior to the release by the Bureau of Customs or a local manufacturer’s warehouse.
In its latest revenue regulation, the BIR issued its own rules and regulations, specifically setting of floor price for vape products.
The BIR said the minimum floor price of vape products shall be the total production cost, expense or landed cost of the cheapest brand per tobacco product including the sum of excise tax and value added tax (VAT).
For heated tobacco products, P140 will be the floor price for those with production cost of P95, excise tax of P30 and VAT of P15.
Further, the BIR set a P131.04 floor price for 0.7 milliliter (ml) pod of nicotine. This will increase to P306.88 and P318.08 for 1.8 ml and 1.9 ml nicotine salts, respectively.
For a conventional freebase or classic nicotine, the floor price is set at P207.20 for a 15-ml bottle with production cost of P75, excise tax of P110 and a VAT of P22.20.
A larger bottle of 30 ml classic nicotine will be priced at a minimum P352.80.
For novel tobacco products, the 10-gram novel-snus will have a minimum floor price of P224.04. Bigger ones weighing 15.84 and 40 grams will be pegged at P252.04 and P280.11, respectively.
Novel tobacco products refer to “all non-combusted substances in solid or liquid form, and innovations, either made partly of tobacco leaf as raw material or containing nicotine from tobacco intended to be used as a substitute for cigarettes or other combusted tobacco products.”