Addicted to Nicotine Taxes

Campus Report ^ | July 17, 2008 | Daniel Smith

[bs9021]

Addicted to Nicotine Taxes

by: Daniel Smith, July 17, 2008

The main claims that politicians make when they raise taxes on cigarettes have been found to be wanting, and very expensively so, by the National Taxpayers Union. The NTU’s Kristina Rasmussen provides “five reasons why non-smokers should oppose high tobacco taxes.” Rasmussen worked from the primary source of actual state budgets.

First, argued Rasmussen, “states with low cigarette taxes tend to have lower overall tax burdens.” Analyzing the 16 states with the highest per-pack cigarette tax, Rasmussen discovered that these same states had a higher “per capita state and local tax burden” compared with the 16 states with the lowest per-pack cigarette tax. For example, New Jersey had the highest cigarette tax at $2.75 per pack; South Carolina the lowest at $.070. New Jersey’s per capita tax burden was $5,234, while South Carolina’s was $3,213. Rasmussen organized both the tax burdens and cigarette taxes in two tables of 16 states. On the high cigarette tax side, overall burdens reached over $6,000 (Connecticut). On the low side, only one state’s overall burden reached $4 ,000 (Virginia).

Secondly, Rasmussen demonstrated that “tobacco tax hikes are rarely used to cut other taxes.” Instead, state and local legislators tended to commingle tobacco taxes “with other tax increases” or “with cuts worth less than” the actual tobacco increase. In 2003, 19 states hiked tobacco taxes; yet, only one of them offset the hike. The only other year since 2001 that a state has offset tobacco hikes was in 2007. This led Rasmussen to conclude that states “don’t refund the revenue” from tobacco taxes—“they spend it.”

Rasmussen next showed that “tobacco tax hikes don’t forestall other tax increases.”...

[GOP_Lady]

Nanny State Ping!

[Graybeard58]

states “don’t refund the revenue” from tobacco taxes—“they spend it.”

 

I'm shocked!

 

 

[Dutch Boy]

What if the tobacco companies just stopped producing tobacco products for 1 year? Many of them have other means of making profit and this would be a good stick it to the nanny state move. Imagine the panic if there were zero tax dollars from cigarette sales. It would take nerves of steel but it would prove a point about who was really addicted to cigarettes.