Hipsters and other smokers who roll their own cigarettes will be slugged more for their tobacco products.
Anti-smoking advocates are over the moon with the tax increase in Tuesday's federal budget, which they say will lift the price of 50 gram bags of tobacco by up to $8 over the next four years.
The government is raising taxes on roll-your-own tobacco and other products such as cigars to bring rollies in line with manufactured cigarettes.
The measure is expected to rake in $360 million over four years, including an extra $35 million in GST revenues.
It'll be achieved by downsizing assumptions on a cigarette's tobacco content from 0.8 to 0.7 grams, impacting excise and customs duty rates the government says have until now favoured rollies.
The increases, starting in September, will coincide with 12.5 per cent tobacco tax hikes.
Quit Victoria director Sarah White says two-thirds of teens who have smoked in the past month have used roll-your-own tobacco, and a quarter of them have used it more than 20 times.
"We hope that higher prices for roll-your-own tobacco will deter young people from experimenting," Dr White said on Wednesday.
"We also hope it will reverse a trend in some adult smokers switching to roll-your-own tobacco rather than quitting."
Hipsters will also be hit with a new levy on avocados, but it's unlikely to hitch up prices paid at the shops.
The government in April introduced a 0.1 cent per kilogram levy per kilogram of fresh avocados to support biosecurity management for the industry.
But there's a corresponding reduction in the existing avocado research and development levy, down from 3 cents per kilo to 2.9 cents.
The government is also removing the double taxation of digital currencies such as Bitcoin.
Digital currency is currently treated as intangible property for GST purposes, meaning consumers pay the tax once while purchasing it and again when using it in exchange for other goods and services subject to GST.
Purchasing digital currency will no longer be subject to the GST, in a move the government hopes will remove an obstacle for the financial technology sector to grow in Australia.
This measure is expected to trigger a "small but unquantifiable" drop in GST revenues.
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