Sugar Tax, companies and trade unions united: postpone the rule, 5,000 jobs at risk

Businesses and unions on the warpath against the Sugar tax, the tax on the consumption of sweetened soft drinks which, according to the government's amendment to the Superbonus decree-law, should come into force next 1 July, albeit halved, and then go into full rigime from 1 July 2026. "We confidently ask the government to continue working to find useful solutions to postpone purely ideological measures that are damaging to the country because they increase inflation, penalise citizens and sink companies in the production peak ahead of the summer season," said Giangiacomo Pierini, president of Assobibe, the Confindustria association representing soft drink producers in Italy.

"This is in contradiction with what is stated in the technical report," the association recalls. "Why increase the tax per litre of product to businesses and citizens by 14% at a time when interest rates on mortgages are still high and the economy and growth are uncertain," Pierini states. We must avoid the effects of the tax on all the links in the chain, estimated by Nomisma in a contraction of sales (-16%), of investments (-46 mln), of purchases of raw materials (-400 mln), in addition to the consequent employment risks (-5 thousand jobs).

"As a sector since 2006 we have worked on our offer and our marketing activities, but also through protocols with the Ministry of Health: we have cut sugar on the shelf by 41% in ten years without the need for taxes, we have adopted strict self-restrictions in sales to the most fragile consumers such as children, we have adhered to the Quarter without Inflation and supported Nutrinform with MmiT, convinced that penalising a single ingredient as proposed by Nutriscore is absurd. Principle, the latter, moreover, shared by the Government but in contradiction with the confirmation of the Sugar tax, as Federalimentare also said yesterday'.

Concerning the mismatch between the technical report and yesterday's tabled amendment, the president commented: 'The technical report also indicates a postponement of the Sugar tax, in addition to the Plastic tax, to July 2026: a postponement that was evidently deemed necessary. We are cancelling a useless and harmful tax, which even where better formulated than this has not produced the health effects for which it was intended'.

"The failure to extend the Sugar Tax, risks being a boulder for the distribution industry for the HoReCa channel (hotels, restaurants and bars, ed. This was stated in a joint note by Antonio Portaccio, President of Italgrob, the Italian Federation of Horeca Distributors, a member of Confindustria, and Dino Di Marino, General Manager of Italgrob. The tax,' they continue, 'is an unfair and vexatious measure towards the sector that will have repercussions both on the primary supply chain and on end consumers, but above all on employment levels. We hope that in the next few hours the Government will be able to find a rapid reformulation of the text stamped by the Ragioneria, defusing the application of an unfair tax and clarifying the obvious mismatching between what is contained in the technical report, which postpones the introduction of the Sugar Tax to 2026, and what is stamped by the Ragioneria dello Stato, which instead certifies the go-ahead from 1 July 2024,' Portaccio and Di Marino conclude.