Rory Stewart, the Environments minister made the tax claim but a spokesperson for his department refuted the claim just hours later.
Stewart claimed the tax would work similarly to the plastic bags tax introduced in England last year.
In response to a question about the ‘huge problem’ of coffee cups going to landfill in the House of Commons, Stewart replied: “I absolutely agree. It's a huge problem and there are tens of millions of these things being produced and thrown away.
"As you have pointed out, many of these things cannot be recycled either by the way they're disposed or because of the composition of the cup.
"Having tackled plastic bags, which I hope everybody in the House would agree the plastic bag tax has been a success, coffee cups seem to be a very good thing to look at next."
It was revealed earlier this week that just one in every 400 coffee cups is recycled every year, despite more than seven million being used every day, amounting to 2.5 billion a year.
The takeaway coffee cups many of the big chains use contain polyethylene, a plastic lining on the inside of the cup that prevents the cardboard from going soggy, leading to most ending up in landfill.
Simply Cups, a partnership between Closed Loop Environmental Solutions and Simply Waste Solutions has called for collaborative action.
Peter Goodwin, co-founder of Simply Cups, said: “consumers are not being deliberately misled about why their used cups and cartons end up on a rubbish heap rather than made into second-life materials. Indeed, the lack of effective recycling will have surprised many brands and companies in the supply chain, who have historically passed the problem back down the line, without necessarily asking what really is happening to their waste.
“Whilst the waste industry is often criticised for its inability to provide solutions for every waste stream, it should not be its responsibility alone to solve the problem, nor is it acceptable to lay the blame wholly at their door.”