I do not smoke, but the taxes on cigarettes are beyond absurd. What’s a pack of cigarettes cost in New York City? What would they cost sans all local and federal taxes?
Where does the Constitution delegate this power to Congress?
They’ll just replace it with an excise tax on guns and bullets.
Want to do something? It better be Constitutional.
/johnny
Congress will never go for it. The states make too much money off cigarette taxes.
I do so agree, they already have gross receipts taxes but they shouldn’t be able to tax specific products.
I know a guy who lives in New York City. He despises the place (the crowds, the stink, the noise, the ridiculously high taxes and cost of living, etc.). But he’s stuck there because of his job. And he’s a smoker. Occasionally his friends in Florida will feel sorry for him and mail him a carton of cigarettes. In Florida a carton of cigarettes costs about sixty bucks. In New York a carton of cigarettes costs more than two hundred bucks. And people wonder why nobody lives in that godawful city except the super-rich, the hard-working slobs trying to get over, and the immigrants who just got here and haven’t yet figured out that the whole country is wide open to them.
I have a better idea. Let’s do away with all these frivilous laws that requires individuals to “NEED” a license to do their small time businesses. Why would an individual need a “LICENSE” to sell a cigarette, or rent his home or apartment to city visitors, or pick up paying passengers in his car, or sell his vegetables that he grows in his garden? All of these picayun “LAWS” were placed by these politicians who has nothing better to do but figure out a way to spend more and more of our money on their pet projects.
I find it comical in PA when it is advertised “Lowest State Allowed Prices”..Absurd.
the fed govt has no right banning any taxes on locals, city, county, or state. Cities get to choose what they tax, for now,,you want to take away that choice?
Nothing in the Constitution prevents states from passing stupid laws.
I have yet to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which empowers Congress to deny a municipality the power to tax cigarettes.
To paraphrase Madison.
No federal legislation. A major part of the overall problem is thefederalization of everything.