Cigarette smuggling

TownHall.com ^ | 8/06/02 | Bruce Bartlett

[Khepera]

You still have to pay tax on the tobacco. unless you grow your own..

[SheLion]

You stillhave to pay tax on the tobacco.

We pay $5.75 for a bag of tobacco, menthol or regular, and there is just a surcharge. Not a tax.

This bag makes a carton of cigarettes. We buy the filtered tubes, 200 in a box, for $1.99.

Couldn't be happier!

[SheLion]

cough, cough

Are you being smart with me? What's THAT all about!

[Khepera]

OK Thats an option.

[SheLion]

You still have to pay tax on the tobacco. unless you grow your own..

Read my lips: SURCHARGE ONLY - NO TAX!

[SheLion]

OK Thats an option.

Help To Roll Your Own

[BlackRazor]

""When they did a similar gigantic tax in Canada in 1992-93, they created a $1 billion smuggling industry," Lipsky pointed out the day before the tax took effect."

So that's why! I attended college from 1990-1994 in upstate NY, about 30 minutes from the Canadian border. I knew a handful of classmates who would load up a pickup truck with U.S. cigarettes and smuggle them into Canada. As far as I know, they were never caught.

[eeriegeno]

This chart is outdated. Pennsylvania carton tax is $10.00.

[SheLion]

This chart is outdated. Pennsylvania carton tax is $10.00.

Same with Maine!

[Gabz]

I appreciate the link - however I found at least one error in the tax table, therefore there may be others.

The state excise tax in Delaware is 24 cents per pack not 50 cents. Therefore the tax on a carton is $2.40 not $5.00.

[Gabz]

You stillhave to pay tax on the tobacco.

You are correct. But loose tobacco is taxed differently than are cigarettes. In most locales the tax is based on the wholesale price of the "package" of tobacco. Similar to a sales tax.

Most loose tobacco for RYO cigarettes is not coming from the major tobacco companies, instead it is coming from smaller companies with lower overhead and so they can provide it at lower cost, thus further lowering the excise taxes imposed.

I generally purchase my tobacco in 1 pound bags for $11.25. Prefiltered tubes average $2.50 a carton. A pound bag of tobacco yeilds me 3 cartons of cigarettes for $6.25 per carton.

Lots of other advantages besides paying less into the state coffers on excise txes - no MSA payments, none of the additives found in the major manufacturers product, a slower burning cigarette, one that will go out if left for any length of time in an ashtray, and there is less residual odor of stale smoke.

But the best benefit, to me at least, is it giving the middle finger to states and their money grubbing way and to the major cigarette companies for selling out their clientele with the MSA.

[Gabz]

Interesting about the errors. The listing for your states are less than reality and the listing for my state is over reality.

I'm not thrilled with those obvious errors.

[SheLion]

Interesting about the errors. The listing for your states are less than reality and the listing for my state is over reality.

What errors are you talking about?

[norraad]

Oh, møñ duiex, I meant no harm, I cough when I blend too much rich Holland Dark in my roll ups.

Depending on what blends I use it can be 1¢ or less per fag(oh, God, now who did I offend).

[FourtySeven]

The inevitable result of talk like this will be, unfortunately, unrelenting pressure by the anti-smokers to get all 50 states to raise their taxes as high as the highest state. Then, once that's accomplished, go after the Internet based businesses and the Indian Reservations. Smoking clearly is on its last legs, and I obviously can't argue the science behind such actions, it's just the fact that the government is making my decisions for me, yet again, that really rankles me.

Going back to the Indian reservations though, all this cigarette tax insanity might actually be worth it to see which the liberals value more: "Native Americans" or the persecution of the smoker. hehe

[Publius6961]

shhhhhh!
Stop gloating.

they can start taxing loose tobacco, you know

[RobRoy]

>>Yup. The government has the bad habit of turning decent folk into criminals.<<

The 55 mph speed limit turned virtually all driving americans into speeders - lawbreakers. Once you see yourself as a lawbreaker, and justify it, what other laws do you think are unjust and therefor permissible to break.

And if you are a wanton lawbreaker, what are your feelings about the police?

No wonder the general population is a little less civil than it used to be.

[hoosierboy]

Indiana raised their cigarette tax 50 cents and were actually higher than michigan for a month until michigans tax increase went into effect.