On 13 January 2026 the World Health Organisation (WHO) released the Global Report on the Use of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes 2025. The report looks at taxes applied to sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in 2024 at the global level. The report updates an assessment previously carried out in 2022.
The latest report compares the design of SSB excise taxes globally and compares tax levels among countries. The assessment builds on the WHO manual on SSB taxation policies and aims to inform policy-making and support research. By using excise taxes, countries can reduce the affordability of SSBs and reduce their consumption, leading to improvements in public health. Over the past twenty years, an increasing number of countries have begun taxing SSBs, but the taxes differ widely in their design and tax rate, and for this reason many of the taxes are not optimized to achieve health objectives.
The report notes that as of July 2024, national excise taxes were applied to at least one type of SSB in at least 116 countries. For maximum effect, the WHO considers that these taxes should apply to all beverage types, as this prevents consumers substituting their consumption from taxed beverages to untaxed sugary beverages. However, most countries do not tax 100% fruit juices, sugar-sweetened ready-to-drink tea or coffee or sugar-sweetened milk-based drinks, even though these also contain free sugars.
The report found that almost half of the countries applying excise taxes to non-alcoholic beverages included unsweetened bottled water as a taxable item. This is not good practice, as unsweetened water is a healthy product. The consumption of healthy substitutes should be incentivized instead of being taxed.
The countries that tax sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages mostly apply either ad valorem or volume-specific excise taxes. However, only 14% of those countries automatically adjust their specific excise tax component to taken inflation into account. This can result in the taxes becoming less effective over time as the tax component of the price decreases.
The report also noted that fewer than a quarter of the countries in the survey accounted for sugar content when they imposed taxes on non-alcoholic beverage products. The WHO considers that countries with a sufficiently strong tax administrative capacity should tax beverages based on sugar content, as this can encourage consumers to switch to using alternatives that have lower sugar content. Also, this can provide an incentive for the industry to change the ingredients of beverages to contain less sugar.
The survey also revealed that some countries apply varying rates of value added tax (VAT) on sugar-sweetened beverages. The VAT rate on SSBs was higher than the standard rate in only 1% of the countries, but 12% applied a lower VAT rate to SSBs. The WHO considers that SSBs are not essential products and should not benefit from reduced VAT rates.
The WHO considers that excise taxes need to be sufficiently high to impact affordability. The report notes that currently excise tax levels are generally very low. Countries need to increase taxes to a high enough level to ensure the products do not become more affordable over time.
The report concludes that excise taxes on SSBs are not currently being used to their fullest potential. Countries need to improve their tax policy design to align to the health objectives. Countries also need to increase taxes so that SSBs become less affordable over time.
