Accredited official statistics

Tobacco statistics commentary January 2025

Updated 28 February 2025

1. Headline statistics

The latest headlines for Tobacco Duty statistics are:

• total tobacco receipts for the complete calendar year (January 2024 to December 2024) were £290 million (3%) lower than the same period in the previous calendar year (January 2023 to December 2023)

• total tobacco receipts for the period November 2024 to January 2025 are £465 million (20%) lower than the same period in the previous year (November 2023 to January 2024)

• total tobacco receipts for the last complete financial year (April 2023 to March 2024) were £8,804 million, which is £1,199 million (12%) lower than the previous financial year (April 2022 to March 2023).

• lower receipts in the 2023 to 2024 financial year were driven by a decrease in receipts for both cigarettes (down by 14%) and hand rolling tobacco (down by 6%)

• this release includes corrected statistics on tobacco receipts and clearances by type of tobacco product back to January 2020. As total receipts are unimpacted, the direction of this correction varies by type of tobacco product each month.

2. About this release

This publication provides National Statistics on Tobacco Duty, which covers duty on cigarettes, cigars, hand rolling tobacco, and other types of tobacco such as pipe and chewing tobacco. National Statistics are accredited official statistics.

The statistics in this release are based on data from recent and historic trader returns up to January 2025. Detailed statistics on clearances and receipts are provided in the accompanying tables.

In practice, Tobacco Duty is paid under duty deferment arrangements, whereby liability accrued during one calendar month is paid in duty to HMRC the following month. Therefore, the monthly receipts statistics covered in this publication relate to tobacco products cleared in the previous month.

3. Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Impacts from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and public health measures in response are visible within changing trends to receipts collected for Tobacco Duty since April 2020. Go to Coronavirus (COVID-19) for the latest coronavirus information and guidance.

4. Tobacco Duty

Tobacco Duty is a tax payable on tobacco products manufactured in the UK or imported into the UK.

Manufacturers must make a return to HMRC on any day when tobacco products are released onto the UK market unless the manufacturer has an agreement with HMRC to defer duty, in which case a return can be made on a monthly basis.

Changes to Tobacco Products Duty are announced in the fiscal announcement each year. Clearances are usually high in months immediately preceding the fiscal announcement due to tobacco manufacturers forestalling against duty increases.

Further information can be accessed at Tobacco Products Duty and a statistical background is available in the accompanying Tobacco statistics background and references document. Current Tobacco Duty rates can be accessed at Tobacco Products Duty rates.

5. Monthly total tobacco receipts

Monthly total tobacco cash receipts are calculated by summing the receipts from a variety of different cigarette types and other tobacco products. This, as well as substantial changes to rates of duty across all tobacco products and forestalling prior to government budgets or the tobacco manufacturers’ own price rises, mean that monthly total receipts have been volatile over the last few years.

Figure 1: Total monthly tobacco cash receipts for the current and previous 2 financial years

For the full dataset that accompanies Figure 1 go to Tobacco statistics tables (January 2025)

Figure 1 demonstrates several trends for total Tobacco Duty receipts:

• total tobacco receipts for the latest financial year quarter (October 2024 to December 2024) are £1,902 million, which is £236 million (11%) lower than the same period in the previous financial year

• in the 2023 to 2024 financial year, tobacco receipts saw spikes in July to September, and December 2023 to January 2024, whereas in the 2022 to 2023 financial year, peaks occurred in April, July, September, and December 2022, with the April 2022 spike driven by clearance timing effects not observed in April 2023

6. Tobacco receipts by product type

Figure 2: Total tobacco receipts for the last 10 financial years split by cigarettes, HRT, cigars and other

For the full dataset that accompanies Figure 2 go to Tobacco statistics tables (January 2025)

Figure 2 demonstrates several trends for total tobacco receipts by product type:

• across the last 10 financial years, tobacco receipts reached their highest total in 2021-2022

• other tobacco products remained fairly stable as a proportion of the total, only seeing a pronounced increase in the financial year ending 2021

• cigar receipts and other tobacco products remain a small percentage of total tobacco receipts

Figure 3: Cigarette and HRT yearly tobacco receipts for the previous 10 financial years

For the full dataset that accompanies Figure 3 go to Tobacco statistics tables (January 2025)

Figure 3 demonstrates several trends for cigarette and HRT yearly receipts:

• cigarette receipts have generally been decreasing since a high of £8,559 million in the financial year ending 2013, stabilising in 2021, but markedly decreasing to £6,535 million in 2023-2024

• HRT receipts more than doubled (increase of 120%) between the financial years ending 2014 and 2022, rising from £1,089 million to £2,390 million. However, between the financial years ending 2023 and 2024, HRT receipts fell by £128 million (6%), while cigarette receipts declined by £1,033 million (14%)

Figure 4: Cigar and other products yearly tobacco receipts for the previous 10 financial years

For the full dataset that accompanies Figure 4 go to Tobacco statistics tables (January 2025)

Figure 4 demonstrates several trends for cigar and other tobacco products yearly receipts:

• cigar receipts have increased by 61% over the previous 5 financial years from £93 million in the financial year ending 2020 to £150 million in the last complete financial year

• receipts from other tobacco products rose significantly between the financial years ending 2019 and 2023, increasing by £64 million. This growth was primarily driven by receipts in March 2023. However, receipts fell by £39 million (44%) in the 2023 to 2024 financial year, bringing them back down to the same level as the financial year ending 2021

• the increase in other tobacco receipts observed in recent years is partly due to the new specific excise category of Tobacco for Heating, previously assessed individually, and changes in preferences during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns. However, these emerging categories remain very small compared to cigarettes and HRT

7. Contacts

The Tobacco Bulletin is produced by the Indirect Tax Receipts Monitoring team as part of the Excise duties, VAT, and other indirect tax statistics collection.

For statistical enquiries, contact:

revenuemonitoring@hmrc.gov.uk

For media enquiries, see HMRC press office. Telephone: 03000 550 493