Posted on 03/21/2014 7:00:51 PM PDT by PaulCruz2016
A majority of the cigarettes for sale in New York are illegally smuggled into the state, according to a report out Wednesday from the conservative research group the Tax Foundation.
According to the report, 56.9% of the cigarettes sold in New York—the highest importer of smuggled cigarettes—originated from out of state. Since 2006, cigarette smuggling in the state has risen sharply, by 59%, in tandem with a massive hike in cigarette taxes of 190%. New York state now has the highest cigarette taxes in the country, at $4.35 a pack. Residents of NYC must also pay an extra $1.50 per pack.
The state with the highest rate of outbound cigarette smuggling is relatively low tax New Hampshire, which is only a short drive away from New York.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Having done nothing wrong, I worry not. Everything I buy and everything I smoke is legal in the state of Ohio. It is the small business tobacco shops I worry about.
The shop I used had machines that rolled the cigarettes for you ... state did away with those.
One government step at a time.
All you need is a controlled commodity, a geopolitical boundary, and a price difference. Boom, you have smuggling.
Why dont they just double the tax to make up for it?
Then you get an international arbitrage. The cartels would love it.
Most of the people around my area smoke Indian Cigs.
When I was a smoker and lived in Montana I found the price for a carton went up to $70 overnight (for the children) so I got them mailed to me from NY. Some Indian reservation there. Elliot Spitzer put a stop to that by telling UPS that they couldn’t pick up packages from the reservations or else. Now we have Most cigs bought in NEW York on the black market.
“so what is the penalty for smuggling or selling untaxed ny cigarettes in ny?”
Apparently it is a felony.
http://www.waynetimes.com/uncategorized/two-nabbed-distributing-indian-reservation-cigarettes/
Interesting; many years ago I was in upstate NY when NYC had reached $10 per pack. The Indian reservation outside Niagara Falls NY was selling the same cigs at $22 per carton. They took down your license plate, but we could only buy 2 cartons anyway (since we were going into Ontario the next day, and you could only bring a carton apiece).
Amusingly, with a 190% increase and 57% smuggling, they are only collecting 82% of the revenue they would without that tax and with no smuggling. I suspect they would increase their revenue by repealing the tax to reduce the profits on both smuggling and buying smuggled tobacco. Liberals would never follow that advice, even if they understood it.
Only 57% Who is buying the platinum priced cigs?
The tax was not meant to increase revenue, the tax was supposed to make people stop smoking.
Control of human behavior is the first rule of Moonbats
New York is no longer America
It's not so simple since states want to have their fingers into our wallets directly, not to beg for a trickle with strings attached from the feds. Of course, as the two fight over it, increasing fraction of smokers shifts to completely untaxed cigarettes and tobacco smuggled from abroad (e.g. China, Ukraine, Mexico) and from Indian reservations.
Smokers will naturally choose to do the business with the least evil and the least greedy criminals, which means mafia and drug cartels rather than state and federal governments.
Any estimates from your doctor on how much longer your menopausal state will drag on?
Oh, they like the money, too. If everybody quit smoking they’d institute a tax against people who used to smoke and are stealing revenue from the government by quitting.
How long will you continue to be an addict?
“Smuggled” here means “Bought outside of New York and driven across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn”.
What do you think we should do with these statists who are addicted to cigarette tax revenue?
These criminals need to be punished!
5 to 10 years for greedy state politicians who Raised these cigarette taxes to absurd levels and robbed hard working people of their money To plug budget deficits (for their own good of course)
20 to 30 year sentence for big pharmaceutical and MSA funded front groups like a ALA, ACS CTFK And seizure of all their assets including the Audi A6, ski chalet in Aspen
Death penalty to the grant junkies and scientific frauds who invented the secondhand, thirdhand, fourth hand smoke lies
Give these bootleggers a medal and an award
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