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Monday, 13.05.2024, 07:57
Tax board: up to 5,000 people in Estonia are involved in cigarette smuggling
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"The board's aim is to make the life of dealers of contraband cigarettes as uncomfortable as possible and reduce the share of smuggled cigarettes in the market to less than 14% by 2016, according to the empty pack study," explained Koppelmaa. According to the latest so-called empty pack study, the share of smuggled cigarettes is now about 20% in Estonia.
Until some years ago, passengers brought huge amounts of both legal and illegal cigarettes from Russia. For example, in 2012, more than 90% of all the people who crossed the border at Narva brought at least 40 cigarettes with each border-crossing and some of the people made a number of trips per day. Stricter restrictions on the importation of excise goods closed that activity down almost completely.
The Estonian state was deprived of around 30 mln euros of taxes because of illegal cigarettes last year.
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