"Not at all. Nobody is going broke paying for smokes in NYC. Even those outrageous taxes aren't enormous from a taxpayer's perspective in total dollar terms."
Are you honestly claiming that $7 per pack cost for cigs is not outragous in the consumer's mind?
"Again, it's not an unbearable burden; just one very easy to evade."
If it is not unbearable, why would evasion take place? Why do so many people bear the state sales taxes?
"It's pretty easy to see when your withholding is increased."
For you and I, but how about the citizen that doesn't care to educate themselves? How about those that consider their tax return to be a windfall? How about the 49% that pay 0% in fed taxes?
"Yes I do. STOP UNNECESSARY SPENDING!!"
I don't disagree. However, why would a politician stop spending when they can use the current code to buy votes. They steal from the productive to give to the unproductive. They continually expand the ranks of the untaxed and increase the rate of taxation on the most productive. How can this be stopped without forcing the burden to be carried and in plain view of everyone?
You took my quote out of context. The poster I was responding to said that the evasion was evidence that the overall burden of taxation was too high. I was pointing out that the cigarette tax in NYC, while very high in isolation, is not a very high percentage of the total taxes paid by a taxpayer. Therefore people aren't evading the tax because the overall level of tax is high; they just don't like paying $7 tax on cigs and it is easy to evade!
That's precisely my point with the "FairTax" -- it will be too easy to evade without lots of enforcement agents.