How would you like to have your next pair of $32 shoes cost you $86 dollars? Alcoholic beverages, fast food and luxuries are next. Will we be willing to pay $25 for a Big Mac in a few years? If you don't care whether smokers are overtaxed now, it could happen!
Garnet
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"http://www.ntxe-news.com/artman/publish/article_24105.shtml
Smokers have better things to do than pay YOUR bills...
By Dave Pickrell
Mar 5, 2005
TOP TEN REASONS EXCISE TAXES SHOULD NOT BE RAISED IN TEXAS
Our Republican controlled Texas state legislature has the school funding formula close to being right. Close, but no cigar. It has proposed a wide range of taxes that will be paid by a broad base of taxpayers so to the best of their ability no one will be crushed by their tax burden. Well except for one group...smokers. The reasons why excise tax increases of this (or any) magnitude stink are listed below. Smokers wonder when the TRUE cost of smoking on this society will ever see the light of day or have public policy based upon it?
10. Smokers have better things to do than pay YOUR bills.
9. 58% of smokers make $35,000 a year or less.
8. In order to stop kids from smoking, some say raising taxes is a good idea. That's right, punish 98% of the market, which is adults of age, to influence 2%. How about parenting skills?
7. The state of Texas already takes in $130,180 every hour on cigarette taxes now. 6. But that is nothing compared to the $3,352,320 every hour by all governments nationwide.
5. Government now makes 15 times the money on a pack of cigarettes then the tobacco companies.
4. When word of this scam gets out, thugs, loan sharks and street drug dealers will be learning from politicians on how to really perfect their craft.
3. Don't we already have major problems at our boarder with Mexico? If cigarette taxes in Texas get sky high smuggling will explode. A few hundred cartons of cigarettes along with human cargo from Mexico? You bet!
2. Put yourself in our shoes. According to a major tobacco company, at the average retail price of cigarettes, smokers pay $1.61 a pack for the product, and $1.57 in excise and state sales taxes. Since you're in our shoes, let's by a pair. Shoes that cost 32.20 on the shelf would be $63.60 retail cost after the $31.20 tax bite. This is being taxed at the same proportion as the tax level on tobacco currently.
1. If the proposed excise tax increase in Texas is approved then smokers will have to pay $2.73 tax for a product that cost $1.61. And the shoes we are walking in have a sticker price of $86.80!
Would you tolerate a tax burden like this? I didn't think so. So why is the idea still on the table? A "to the bone" chill factor this cold could change our climate in Texas.
Dave Pickrell
President and founder
Smokers Fighting Discrimination, Inc.
A not for profit organization
SFD is 100% grassroots funded.
Pickrell has been an unpaid activist for the fair treatment of smokers since 1993 and a crusader against junk science being used for public policy matters.
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Do you have the same objections to taxes on beer, wine, liquor, perfume, etc.? If not, then it seems a bit hypocritical to merely object to those on tobacco products. If you object to those taxes on other nonessential products, then why are you only carping about those on tobacco?