Berlin. The Federal Ministry of Finance made a mistake with a law that will make cigarette prices significantly more expensive in the coming years. A legal text was published in the Federal Law Gazette, according to which the law will come into force this Wednesday. This surprised the tobacco industry, which had expected it to come into force at the turn of the year.
The Association of the German Smoking Tobacco Industry (VdR) pointed out that the entry into force means that much higher tax rates are already taking effect, which are actually only planned for 2030. “There are no new tax stamps at all - so we would have to stop production immediately because we are no longer allowed to supply cigarettes to retailers,” says Maximilian van Ackeren from the Association of the German Smoking Tobacco Industry (VdR).
In the case of the previous amendment to the Tobacco Tax Act, the text of the law was also published during the year, in August 2021. However, it explicitly stated that the law would not come into force until January 1, 2022. The new legal text, however, states that the law comes into force “on the day after its promulgation”, i.e. on October 21st.
When asked by the dpa, the Federal Ministry of Finance admitted an error. “The higher tax rates should come into force from January 1, 2027, that is the clear will of the legislature and the BMF,” said a ministry spokesman. “There was a technical error regarding the effective date in the documents.”
The ministry has already initiated a correction and the General Customs Directorate, which administers the tax, has been informed. According to the BMF, the factories are allowed to continue delivering despite the error in the law. The cigarettes already in stores can still be sold regardless of the change in the law.
Industry representative van Ackeren was somewhat relieved that the feared production stop would now not happen. “But this is an unpleasant situation for us: our production continues, even though it shouldn’t actually do so according to the current law,” he says. "It's astonishing that such an outrageous mistake could happen to a federal ministry - a ministry writes a law, and the next day it says, 'oops, that was meant completely differently!' This is amateurism that baffles me.”
The Bundestag recently approved the reform of the tobacco tax, and the tax is to increase gradually by 2030. This could make a pack of 20 cigarettes more expensive by around four euros to 11.78 euros. The public was always talking about the period 2027 to 2030 - the fact that the tax increase should take effect earlier was never an issue.
The industry representatives were all the more astonished when they read through the published text of the law. Now it turns out that the ministry also meant the period 2027 to 2030 and made a mistake in the wording of the law.
Millions of people in Germany turn to tobacco cigarettes. The 2025 microcensus showed that 19 percent of those aged 15 and over smoke: 14 percent say they do so regularly and 5 percent occasionally. According to the German Cancer Research Center, around 131,000 people in Germany died as a result of tobacco-related diseases in 2023.
