Cigarette tax rises $1 a pack on Jan. 1 [TEXAS]

STAR-TELEGRAM AUSTIN BUREAU ^ | Dec. 09, 2006 | JOHN MORITZ

[midnightson]

Anyone able to calculate the hit Social Security would take if just half the smokers quit?- The beauty of smoking is the long period of time it takes to kill you- you pay in all those years and then, after an interminable amount of time and expense, you're a goner, and never collect a dime- Ain't Phillip Morris great!

[SheLion]

Huge cigarette taxes don't do anything except make pork for politicians. "When you're too spineless to
cut spending, stick it to the smokers and claim it's for their own good!"

[SheLion]

Texas Information

Comparing Excise Taxes on Cigarettes, Beer and Wine

Number of six-packs of beer that must be sold in Texas to produce the same state excise tax revenue generated by one carton of cigarettes: 36.8


Number of bottles of wine that must be sold in Texas to produce the same state excise tax revenue generated by one carton of cigarettes: 101.4


Excise Taxes        Sales Taxes       Tobacco Settlement Payments    Total Smoker Payments

507,341,000           $261,377,000         $519,900,000                               $1,288,618,000

TOTAL SMOKER CIGARETTE PAYMENTS TO TEXAS FY2005

Per year:        $1,288,618,000

Per day:          $       3,528,044

Per hour:        $          147,002

Per minute:    $              2,450   

Per second:   $                  41       

  

 CIGARETTES DON’T PAY TAXES – TEXAS SMOKERS DO!!

[Liberty Valance]

Texas may very well be a GOP state but it's no longer a conservative state.

[Atchafalaya]

quit.

[LAMBERT LATHAM]

Sure will increase traffic into adjoining states,

No need to dirve out of town. Mexican gangs are already bringing cigaretts up from Mexico. Mexican gang bangers in Dallas have been selling cigaretts from Mexico for a month now. Word on the street is profits are just OK now but January 1 they will jump up.

[Bonaparte]

“We know exactly what will happen once this tax takes effect,” Gray said. “There will be a slight reduction in cigarette consumption. But more importantly, it will discourage young people who don’t smoke from ever starting. Kids are so much more price-sensitive than adults are..."

You don't know squat, Mr. Gray. Everybody will be buying cheap and tax-free from the online Indian reservation smokeshops. Because Texas got greedy and tried to force people to give up their tobacco, they will wind up forfeiting the revenue they would have continued to reap.

[Myrddin]

Wasn't the lottery supposed solve the funding of education problem once and for all?

Tax revenues are fungible. When you introduce a lottery to fund education, the property/income/sales tax revenues that were previously used for education are replaced by the lottery money. The level of funding doesn't go up. It remains level and the property/income/sales tax revenues get diverted to different pet projects that the politicians really wanted to fund with a tax increase. The lottery is a voluntary tax on fools who expect to win.

Eventually, the lottery isn't enough and the politicians return to raise property/income/sales taxes to fund the insatiable appetite of the teacher's union.

[Bonaparte]

Hey, that's even better!

[FlingWingFlyer]

In Arizona, the dummies voted in a nanny state program that teaches women how to breast feed their kids. Everybody went into the booth on November 7th wanting those warm fuzzies by voting for the proposition. Yesterday, they were all was bitching about the EIGHTY CENTS per pack cigarette increase. I went into a couple Circle K convenience stores that had posted signs saying not to bitch at the clerk and they listed the phone number to the Arizona Revenue Department. The morons should have read the fine print in the proposition before voting it in. Smokers are now going to subsidize these breast feeding classes for "mothers." I heard that this "tax" is going to bring in not millions, but billions for the nanny staters. Once again, the "informed" masses outsmarted themselves. What a bunch of idiots.

[Myrddin]

Everybody will be buying cheap and tax-free from the online Indian reservation smokeshops.

Make sure you purchase with cash and collect your purchase in person. If you use a credit card and have the tobacco shipped to your home address, the BATFE and state will have the means to prosecute you for tax evasion.

[LAMBERT LATHAM]

Yep! You don't give the bast###s the gas tax either.

[Bonaparte]

Great post! This is exactly what always happens. Somebody is going to meet the consumer's price, whether that somebody is a lower-tax jurisdiction, a black market, Chinese slave labor, a tax-free Indian reservation or an internet smokeshop. After a hundred years of this endlessly repeating pattern, these morons in government still haven't learned that.

[Bonaparte]

Whoa, what's this about the gas tax? Please explain.

[mysterio]

Make it illegal. Put it to a consensus, and make those who vote to make it illegal put down their addresses. Send the zealots a bill for the difference. Let the black market reap the profits. That's my opinion.

[SheLion]

Both are talking about the $1 increase in the tax on a pack of cigarettes that Texas smokers will start paying Jan. 1 as part of the sweeping overhaul of the state’s school finance system enacted by lawmakers in the spring. It’s the first increase in the state’s levy on tobacco products since 1991 and is expected to generate about $700 million a year until smoking rates begin dropping off, expected in 2010.

So why are only 20-30% of the constituents forced to pay for the above instead of every citizen in Texas?  Why is the burden being placed on smokers?

I thought Texas wanted a Smoke Free State?  They talk out of both sides of their dirty mouths.........banning smokers, controlling smokers and restricting smokers, yet all the while, they can't balance a state budget withOUT the smokers.

[SheLion]

Attention Texas Smokers:

Can't stand the high taxes?

Afraid to order off of the Internet?

Then start rolling your own!!! I find everything but the machine downtown at the local Smoke Shop.  Also, Rite Aid and grocery stores also sell the bags of tobacco and the filtered tubes.

I roll out a beautiful carton for a little under $8 dollars.  Premiums in my state are now up to $45-$50 a carton.  Can you imagine the money I have saved over the past 4 years since I now roll my own?  It's mind boggling.

under $50.00

Check StuffYourOwn for prices on tobacco

$1.99 for 200 filtered tubes

Make your own cigarettes for as low as $6.99 per Carton! Smoke Quality FILTERED cigarettes that you make yourself using cigarette tubes (like a cigarette without the Cigarette tobacco), our cigarette making machines, and our "roll your own" cigarette tobacco.


-Stop Paying High Cigarette Taxes
-So Much Easier than "Roll Your Own" cigarettes!

and

Smokers United

Roll Your Own Tobacco Store

Roll Your Own Magazine

[LAMBERT LATHAM]

If you don't drive out of state you don't use the extra gas so you don't give them the extra tax.

[Bonaparte]

Got it! Another reason I like shopping online -- point, click, it's on the doorstep.

[tiger-one]

In 2000 my wife and I honeymooned in FR, GR and Lux. Often wondered what Lux's main industry was, besides pastry and perfume.

Best breakfast in Eur, GR

Here in NH we suck the business from MA, cigs, better airport, no sales tax, no income tax. Expect all that to halt with the recent election of the Libs.