Free Republic

Hundreds of Michigan residents are getting a big surprise this tax season--hefty tax bills for cigarettes they bought online over the past four years. The state sent the bills to 553 residents last week after subpoenaing 13 online tobacco shops for names of Michigan customers and their order histories, a Michigan Treasury Department spokesman Caleb Buhs said on Friday. The tax bills are based on information from just one store, and the state expects to collect more names from the others. Collectively, the people receiving this first round of bills owe the state $1.4 million, an average of $2,500 per...

N.Y. asks online cigarette buyers to cough up taxNew York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday that smokers who bought cigarettes over the Internet had better be prepared to cough up taxes they tried to avoid by going online. "The law says you got to pay your taxes. The handful of people who don't are just stealing from the rest of us," Bloomberg said in a weekly radio address. The city's finance department this week sent letters to 3,700 smokers asking them to fork over $1.3 million in city taxes from Internet tobacco purchases. The annual loss to the city from...