Standardising the Measurement of E-Cigarette Taxes in the United States, 2010-2020

Introduction: E-cigarette taxes have been enacted by 30 states through April 2020. E-cigarette tax schema vary, in contrast to cigarette taxes in the United States that are levied almost exclusively as excise taxes per pack. Some states use excise taxes on liquid and containers, others ad valorem taxes on wholesale prices, and others sales taxes. It is therefore difficult to understand the relative magnitudes of these e-cigarette taxes and the overall e-cigarette tax size relative to the cigarette tax size. Objective: To create and publish a database of state and local quarterly e-cigarette taxes from 2010 to 2020, standardized as the rate per milliliter of fluid.Methods: Using UPC-level e-cigarette sales from the NielsenIQ Retail Scanner Dataset along with e-cigarette product characteristics collected from internet searches and visits to e-cigarette retailers, we develop a method to standardize e-cigarette taxes as an equivalent average excise tax rate measured per milliliter of fluid. Results: In 2020, the average American resided in a location with $3.08 in cigarette taxes and $0.34 in e-cigarette taxes (assuming 1 pack = 0.7 fluid milliliters).Conclusions: The public availability of this state and local standardized e-cigarette tax data will allow tobacco control researchers to study the relationship between e-cigarette taxes and tobacco and related outcomes more effectively