Posted on 05/16/2004 7:28:19 AM PDT by Leisler
Daily News goes undercover to learn true cost of city's high-tax war on butts.
They linger outside storefronts or sit on fire hydrants and whisper as you walk past, "Newports, Newports, Newports."
Some carry their merchandise in black plastic bags. Others stuff their pockets.
After two years with the highest cigarette taxes in the nation, bootlegging is a growing New York City profession that easily pays $40,000 a year - tax-free.
On Friday officials acknowledged that a third of the city's smokers buy from bootleggers, the Internet or Indian reservations.
The Daily News sent a crew of Columbia University journalism students to investigate. They found bootlegging thriving across the city, an underground economy that robs the city of tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
puff ping.
This is one non-smoker who gets p!ssed when he sees the continous greed and false piety of the anti-smoking/big-goernment crowd.
I agree...to hell w/the " its' for the Chil'ren " crowd. :|
I love how it says "Robs the city of tens of millions of dollars of revenue each year!"
Uh, first of all, not paying a tax is not "Robbing." Especially when the tax in discussion is onerous and out of proportion with any sense of fairness or even rationality. Second of all, why do we want to give MORE money to governments--they surely waste a quarter of what they extort, at minimum.
The taxpayers of Virginia, Delaware and North Carolina wish to express their gratitude to New York for steering all that revenue our way.
Stupid is as stupid does.
What in heaven's name did they expect?
I agree with you.
One can not be robbed of something they neither had or belonged to them to begin with.
Yes we do!!!!
I have a friend that owns a tobacco outlet just over the Delaware Memorial Bridge in New Castle. He makes a killing everytime NY and NJ raise their cigarette taxes......and he is only open on weekends.
False piety bump.
Bloomberg is a piss-poor wannabe-tyrant.
Absurdly high cig taxes in Montreal about 15 years ago lead to the black market emergence on cigs, leading to tax revenues actually FALLING.
"I don't believe it when they say that they raise the price to get people to stop smoking," [deli owner]Othman said. "It's just an excuse to raise taxes."
Bingo!
Now they're telling us that bootlegging's the cause, something any sentient being could have predicted.
Of course, the solution will be to raise cigarette taxes again, to pay for enforcement.
I remember that.......and I also remember they did the right thing (somewhere in Canada) and lowered the tax.....amazingly revenue increased after that move.
The hypocricies of government never cease to amaze me. they insist that raising cig taxes gets folks to quit smoking......then, when they don't get the projected revenue from said increase they start screaming because they are the ones that turned otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals.
amen!
That's usually the way it works. Must drive our Congresscritters crazy.
""The Daily News sent a crew of Columbia University journalism students to investigate. They found bootlegging thriving across the city, an underground economy that robs the city of tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year.""
Robs them?
Good!
There is nothing that the mind of man can devise that the mind of man can't circumvent.
As sure a new dollar bill comes out, so does the counterfeit hehehehe
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