Sugar taxes around the world: what has worked

By the DieticiansWorldwide.com editorial team · 18 October 2026 · Public health & global nutrition

What a sugar tax is, and the three main designs

"Sugar tax" usually means an excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs): soft drinks, energy drinks and other sweetened drinks. Few countries tax sugar in food. The way the tax is calculated matters a great deal, because it decides whether companies respond by raising prices, changing recipes or both.

Sugar taxes sit alongside other policies that our Global Hub tracks country by country, such as labelling rules, marketing restrictions and dietary guidelines.

Which countries have a sugar tax?

The World Health Organization's 2023 global report is the most complete count. It found that, as of July 2022, excise taxes were applied at national level to at least one type of SSB in at least 108 countries, and 105 of them taxed sugar-sweetened carbonated drinks, the most-sold type (WHO, Global report on the use of sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, 2023).

The same report shows how uneven these taxes are:

• most countries do not tax fruit juices, sugar-sweetened ready-to-drink tea or coffee, or sugar-sweetened milk-based drinks, including plant-based milk substitutes;
• about 46% of countries with SSB excise taxes also tax unsweetened bottled water, which WHO says works against encouraging healthier choices;
• nine countries earmark the revenue for health programmes, mostly for expanding health coverage.

Coverage also varies by region. In March 2022, WHO's European office reported that only 10 of the 53 countries in its region had national SSB taxes, and highlighted Hungary, Latvia and the UK as countries that set rates by sugar content (WHO Europe, taxes on sweetened drinks). In the United States there is no federal tax, but several cities, including Philadelphia, have their own.

Has the UK sugar tax worked?

The UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) is the most closely studied tiered tax. It is charged to producers and importers, not shoppers.

The rates

From 6 April 2018, drinks with 5 g to under 8 g of sugar per 100 ml paid £0.18 a litre and drinks with 8 g or more paid £0.24. The rates were raised from 1 April 2025, and from 1 April 2026 they are £2.08 and £2.78 per 10 litres respectively (HMRC, check if your drink is liable for the levy). Drinks under 5 g per 100 ml pay nothing.

Recipes and sales

The levy was announced in March 2016, two years before it started, which gave manufacturers time to reformulate. Government monitoring found that between 2015 and 2020, the sales-weighted average sugar content of drinks subject to the levy fell by 46%. Total sugar sold in these drinks fell by 34.3%, from 135,391 tonnes to 89,019 tonnes, while total sales volume rose by 21.3%, driven by drinks under the 5 g threshold (Public Health England and OHID, Sugar reduction and reformulation progress report 2015 to 2020). In short, people bought as much soft drink as before, or more, but with much less sugar in it.

Health outcomes

Here the evidence is more cautious, because it is observational and the levy was one of many influences on children's diets.

• Childhood obesity. An analysis of National Child Measurement Programme data for more than a million children found that, by November 2019, obesity prevalence in year 6 girls (aged 10 to 11) was 1.6 percentage points lower than the pre-levy trend predicted, with the biggest falls in the most deprived areas. There was no change in year 6 boys overall, or in reception-age children (Rogers and colleagues, PLOS Medicine, 2023). The authors note that this design cannot rule out other policies or trends happening at the same time.
• Dental health and asthma. The government-funded evaluation of the levy reported a 12% reduction in hospital admissions for tooth extractions due to decay in children and young people up to 18 (Jones and colleagues, NIHR Public Health Research, 2026). A separate study linked the levy to a 20.9% fall in childhood hospital admissions for asthma, an effect the authors called unexpected (Rogers and colleagues, Nature Communications, 2024).
• Projected benefits. Modelling based on the observed fall of 15 g of sugar per household per week from purchased drinks predicted 64,100 fewer children and adolescents with overweight or obesity in the first 10 years, with the biggest gains in the most deprived areas (Cobiac and colleagues, PLOS Medicine, 2024). These are model estimates, not measured outcomes.

The same NIHR evaluation found that the levy "did not have lasting negative impacts on the economic performance of soft drinks companies", and forecast a 0.004% cumulative loss to UK gross domestic product over 22 years, which it judged good value against the health benefits.

What changes next

In July 2026, the government confirmed that from 1 January 2028 the lower threshold will fall from 5 g to 4.5 g of sugar per 100 ml, and pre-packaged milk-based drinks with added sugar will lose their exemption, with an allowance for naturally occurring lactose (HM Treasury and HMRC, changes to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy). Our United Kingdom country guide covers the wider UK nutrition policy picture.

Mexico: a price-based tax

Mexico introduced an excise tax of 1 peso per litre on sugar-sweetened beverages on 1 January 2014. Using purchase data from more than 6,000 households, researchers found that in 2014, purchases of taxed drinks were 6% lower than predicted from pre-tax trends, and 12% lower by December. Households of low socioeconomic status cut purchases most, by 9% on average and up to 17% by December. Purchases of untaxed drinks, mainly bottled water, rose by 4% (Colchero and colleagues, BMJ, 2016).

A follow-up found the effect was sustained: purchases of taxed drinks were 5.5% lower in 2014 and 9.7% lower in 2015, an average of 7.6% over the two years (Colchero and colleagues, Health Affairs, 2017). Both studies measured purchases rather than health outcomes, and both were funded by philanthropic foundations that support such taxes, which the authors declared. Our Mexico country guide covers the country's broader nutrition policy, including its front-of-pack warning labels.

South Africa: a sugar-based levy

South Africa proposed a 20% SSB tax in 2016. After consultations with drinks manufacturers and the sugar industry, it introduced the lower, sugar-based Health Promotion Levy in April 2018, equivalent to roughly 10% of price (Hofman and colleagues, Obesity Reviews, 2021).

Household purchase data showed that mean sugar from taxable drinks fell from 16.25 g per person per day before the levy was announced to 14.26 g after the announcement, and to 10.63 g after it took effect. Lower-income households had bought more taxable drinks beforehand and cut back more (Stacey and colleagues, Lancet Planetary Health, 2021). A later analysis split the 32% fall in sugar from drink purchases into causes: consumer switching and buying less accounted for the equivalent of 71% of the change, and reformulation for 34% (Bercholz and colleagues, Economics and Human Biology, 2022). Our South Africa country guide explains the national context.

City taxes: the Philadelphia lesson

Local taxes face a problem national ones avoid: shoppers can cross the border. Philadelphia introduced a tax of 1.5 cents per ounce in January 2017, covering both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks. Sales data from large chain stores showed taxed drink volume in the city fell by 51.0% in the first year. But sales in neighbouring Pennsylvania zip codes rose by 308 million ounces, offsetting 24.4% of the city's fall (Roberto and colleagues, JAMA, 2019). The data covered about a quarter of taxed drink sales in the city.

Do soda taxes reduce obesity?

This is where the evidence is weakest. A WHO-commissioned systematic review and meta-analysis of 62 studies of implemented SSB taxes found that, on average, 82% of the tax was passed on to prices, demand was highly sensitive to price, and sales of taxed drinks fell by 15%. But changes in measured consumption were not statistically significant, and the review found little data on body weight (Andreyeva and colleagues, JAMA Network Open, 2022). The review also found cross-border shopping in most studies of local taxes and no negative changes in employment.

So the honest summary is: sugar taxes reliably cut purchases or sugar content, and there are early signs of benefit in some groups, such as year 6 girls in England. They are unlikely to reverse obesity on their own. Even the authors of the English childhood obesity study concluded that "additional strategies beyond SSB taxation will be needed".

The case for and against

Sugar taxes divide opinion among economists, health professionals and the public. These are the main arguments, with the evidence each side cites.

Arguments for:

• They change behaviour. Sales fell in every national example above, and the UK tiered design removed large amounts of sugar through reformulation.
• Benefits may be largest for poorer households. In Mexico and South Africa, lower-income households cut purchases most, and UK modelling projected the largest health gains in the most deprived areas.
• Limited economic harm. The WHO-commissioned review found no negative changes in employment, and the UK evaluation found no lasting harm to soft drink companies.
• Revenue. Taxes raise money that governments can, and in nine countries do, earmark for health.

Arguments against:

• Cost falls on those with least. Critics argue that a flat tax on everyday products takes a larger share of a low-income household's budget for every drink it still buys. Supporters reply that the health benefits are also concentrated in poorer households.
• Uncertain effect on weight. Measured consumption and obesity changes are small, inconsistent or limited to some groups.
• Substitution and gaps. Most countries leave juices and milk-based drinks untaxed, so people can switch to other sugary products. The UK evaluation also flagged the rise of non-sugar sweeteners in soft drinks as a question for further research.
• Leakage. Local taxes lose part of their effect to cross-border shopping.
• Choice. Some people object in principle to governments using tax to steer what adults eat and drink.

Weighing these is a political and ethical judgement as well as a scientific one, and reasonable people reach different conclusions.

Taxes, labels or education?

Sugar taxes are rarely used alone, and comparing them with other tools is difficult because countries introduce several at once. Mexico, for example, combined its tax with front-of-pack warning labels years later. The main alternatives work through different routes:

• Labelling helps shoppers compare products at the point of sale; our guide to front-of-pack labelling compares the systems used worldwide.
• Dietary guidelines and education set the message, as in the latest US guidance explained in our new food pyramid guide, but on their own rarely change what is on the shelf.
• Reformulation targets can be voluntary, as in the UK's sugar reduction programme for foods, or forced by a tiered tax, which in the UK drinks category produced much larger cuts.

Affordability matters too. In countries facing both undernutrition and obesity, the subject of our guide to the double burden of malnutrition, a tax on sugary drinks works alongside, not instead of, policies that make healthy food cheaper, such as those discussed in our guides to food insecurity and food fortification.

Whose data to trust

Sugar-tax research is a crowded, contested field, so source quality matters.

• Prefer studies of implemented taxes over predictions. Many headlines come from models; the WHO-commissioned meta-analysis included only studies of taxes actually in force.
• Check for corrections. A widely cited 2021 BMJ analysis of UK household purchases after the levy was later retracted by the journal (PubMed record, retracted article). Conclusions should rest on the full body of evidence, not one study.
• Read the funding statements. Several key evaluations of the Mexican and South African taxes were funded by philanthropies that support health taxes, and the authors declared this. Funding by any interested party, whether a campaign group or a company, does not automatically make a study wrong, but it is a reason to look carefully at the methods.
• Compare like with like. WHO's database standardises tax levels across countries, while national surveys and company sales data use different definitions of sugary drinks.

What makes a sugar tax effective

The evidence above points to several design features that WHO and the researchers repeatedly highlight:

1. Cover all sugary drinks, including juices, sweetened milk drinks and ready-to-drink tea and coffee, to limit switching.
2. Link the rate to sugar content if reformulation is a goal, as the UK, Hungary, Latvia and South Africa do.
3. Set the rate high enough to change prices noticeably, and keep it up to date with inflation, as the UK now does.
4. Tax at national level where possible, to avoid cross-border shopping.
5. Announce early, which in the UK gave manufacturers time to reformulate before the tax started.
6. Monitor and publish results, including sales, sugar content and health outcomes, so the tax can be adjusted.

For individuals, the practical message is unchanged by any tax: water, milk and unsweetened drinks are better everyday choices, and checking the sugar line on a label takes seconds. Our healthy eating check gives a quick picture of your own diet, and our guide to ultra-processed foods explains why many sugary drinks fall into that group.

To follow how sugar taxes, labelling rules and food policy change around the world, subscribe to our newsletter.

Get the evidence-based nutrition newsletter