The UK Vape Tax: What £2.20 Per 10ml Actually Costs You
From 1 October 2026, every millilitre of vaping liquid sold in the UK carries a new tax: Vaping Products Duty, charged at a flat £2.20 per 10ml. It applies to all vaping liquid regardless of nicotine strength — 20mg, 10mg and zero-nicotine are all treated the same.
Most of what has been written about it stops at “prices are going up”. That is true but not useful. What follows is the actual arithmetic, worked through a real product, and the one part of it that surprises people.
What it does to a refill pod
Take a refill most people here already buy: a 12ml IVG Pro refill, currently £5.99.
- 12ml of liquid at £2.20 per 10ml = £2.64 of duty
- VAT is charged on top of the duty, adding roughly 53p
- Total added to the shelf price: about £3.17
So a £5.99 refill becomes something near £9.16. That is a 53% increase on a product people buy without thinking about it.
The part that surprises people
Duty is charged per millilitre, not per device or per puff. That means a bigger refill carries proportionally more duty — but the cost per puff does not change at all.
A 12ml refill rated at 10,000 puffs works out at 1.2ml per thousand puffs. A 6ml refill rated at 5,000 puffs is the same 1.2ml per thousand. Both carry 26.4p of duty per thousand puffs. Identical.
This matters because the industry is about to fill up with smaller refill formats, and they will be sold as the cheaper option. They are cheaper per purchase. They are not cheaper per puff. A 6ml refill carries about £1.32 of duty instead of £2.64 — £1.58 against £3.17 once VAT is applied on top of it. That lowers the shelf price, but it does not lower the cost per millilitre. Smaller formats routinely cost more per ml than larger ones, and duty does nothing to change that, so compare the price per millilitre rather than the price on the shelf.
Whether that is better for you depends on how you shop, not on the maths. If a £9 refill is more than you want to spend at once, a smaller format genuinely helps. If you are working out cost per month, it makes no difference.
How to tell whether duty has been paid
From October, duty-paid stock carries a physical duty stamp: a rectangle roughly 42mm by 18mm, with security features and a scannable code, sealing the outermost packaging. If the seal is broken or the stamp is missing on new stock, that is worth questioning.
Why two shops will have different prices until spring
This is the bit almost nobody explains, and it is the reason prices will not all move on the same day.
Stock that was produced or imported before 1 October 2026 can legally be sold without a duty stamp until 31 March 2027. After that date, unstamped stock cannot be sold at all.
So for about six months there will be two kinds of product on UK shelves: older stock at pre-duty prices, and newly imported stock carrying the full £2.20 per 10ml. A shop with depth in a particular line will hold its price longer than one that sells through and has to reorder. That is not anyone undercutting anyone — it is just where each retailer sat when the rules changed.
What we would actually suggest
Nothing dramatic. Buy the way you normally buy.
The one thing worth knowing is that the price you see on a refill between now and next spring depends as much on when that particular box arrived in the country as on what shop you are standing in. If a price looks unusually good, it is probably pre-October stock, and it is entirely legitimate.
You can see the current refill range on our IVG Pro refills page, the wider IVG collection, and our pods and refills pages.
Figures are based on the published rate of £2.20 per 10ml of vaping liquid taking effect 1 October 2026, and standard UK VAT at 20% applied on the duty-inclusive price. Retail prices are set by each retailer and will vary.
Vaping products are for over-18s only and contain nicotine, which is addictive. They are intended as an alternative for existing smokers and vapers, not for non-smokers.