[Gondring]

I don't get it...

You said:

If you're looking to avoid paying exorbitant taxes on your cigarettes, your best course of action would be to buy your cigarettes at an Indian reservation or take a long trip down to Kentucky or North Carolina once a year to stock up on several hundred cartons.

then:

The sax they owe will have to be paid -- since these purchases have already been recorded.

So how would someone save?

Bottom line is, they are required to pay New Jersey the tax, regardless of where they got the merchandise. Same thing if you buy a car and take it across state lines. Same thing when New Jersey and Pennsylvania had a fight about people crossing the state line to buy alcohol. Same thing for Delaware having no sales tax and people in Pennsylvania going there to shop. In each case, the home state claims that you are supposed to pay them, as I understand it.

Am I misunderstanding?

[Alberta's Child]

When I said "the tax they owe will have to be paid," I was specifically referring to the tax bills these guys have already received in the mail. The state has already obtained a record of these transactions, so they have no alternative but to pay the tax.

In the future, however, they could avoid this tax by purchasing cigarettes from outside New Jersey and paying cash for these purchases -- thereby making it far more difficult (if not impossible) for the state to obtain any kind of record of the transactions.