{"id":25990,"date":"2026-11-04T11:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T09:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=25990"},"modified":"2026-11-04T11:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T09:28:07","slug":"cigarette-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/cigarette-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"12% Rise in Cigarette Tax Brackets Starts Thursday as Smuggled Cigarettes Take 30% of the Market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday 5 November 2026, a 12% increase in the limits of the VAT price brackets for cigarettes takes effect. The increase allows cigarette companies to raise the prices of their products by up to 12% without moving into a higher tax bracket, under the VAT amendments that the House of Representatives <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shorouknews.com\/news\/view.aspx?cdate=03112026&amp;id=fc6b55c2-f45a-4e67-9221-75ff3c4d3477\">approved<\/a> at the end of June 2025, which allow an annual increase of 12% for 3 years.<\/p>\n<p>The ceiling of the first bracket currently stands at EGP 48 ($0.87) per pack, up from EGP 38.88, and the second at EGP 69 ($1.25), up from EGP 55, while the third bracket covers packs priced above EGP 69. A tax of EGP 4 ($0.07) per pack is levied in the first bracket, EGP 7 ($0.13) in the second and EGP 7.5 ($0.14) in the third, in addition to 14% VAT. With the new increase, the price of Eastern Company&#8217;s popular cigarettes could reach about EGP 54 ($0.97) without moving into the higher bracket.<\/p>\n<p>Ibrahim Embabi, head of the tobacco division at the Federation of Egyptian Industries, said companies will study production costs in the coming days, especially after the rise in the dollar exchange rate, and then decide whether or not to raise prices because of the recession, adding: &#8220;Prices don&#8217;t necessarily rise with the increase in the tax bracket.&#8221; The last increase in cigarette prices was in February 2026, at up to 10%.<\/p>\n<p>Embabi said smuggled cigarettes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shorouknews.com\/news\/view.aspx?cdate=03112026&amp;id=df803ea2-798e-46be-a9f7-b7b32f73a70e\">account for<\/a> about 30% of the tobacco market in Egypt in 2026, compared with between 15% and 18% last year, and that a smuggled pack sells for about EGP 25 ($0.45), compared with EGP 50 ($0.90) for the cheapest local popular pack, because they are not subject to taxes or customs, and that their brands include Karila, Shamlan and Bin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"z3b-credit\"><small>Photo: Piotrus via <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Bowl_of_cigarette_butts.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\">CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A 12% rise in the VAT price brackets for cigarettes takes effect on Thursday 5 November, while smuggled cigarettes account for about 30% of the market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":25986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20481],"tags":[21635,19953,21638,21637,21636],"kateb":[710],"class_list":["post-25990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-brief","tag-cigarette-prices","tag-eastern-company","tag-ibrahim-embabi","tag-smuggled-cigarettes","tag-value-added-tax","kateb-zawia3-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/cigarette-tax-en.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26012,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25990\/revisions\/26012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25990"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=25990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}