State busts nearly 9,000 who dodged cigarette tax

[shugah]

State busts nearly 9,000 who dodged cigarette tax
February 28, 2006

LANSING -- Nearly 9,000 people who bought on the Internet to avoid the state's $2-a-pack cigarette tax have been snared in the first year of a state crackdown and forced to pay about $5.9 million in taxes.

The average tax bill was about $650, but some people have been ordered to pay much more. Thousands more smokers could be targeted as the program to find cigarette tax cheaters continues, said state Treasury Department spokesman Terry Stanton.

So far, only four of 13 Internet sellers the state subpoenaed last year agreed to turn over names of their clients. The state has not yet taken legal action against the vendors who haven't handed over their lists of buyers.

~snip~

The high tax prompted thousands of smokers to seek cheaper cigarettes on the Internet. Not paying the state tax means a buyer saves $20 on a carton of 10 packs of cigarettes. A pack-a-day smoker would avoid about $730 a year in taxes.

One Kalkaska woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she said she feared state reprisals, said the state sent her a bill for nearly $2,000 in unpaid cigarette taxes in January. She had purchased them from a New York American Indian tribe.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006602280382

[Craig3410]

1. 2 dollars a PACK?

Geez, I'm anti-smoking and even I think that's excessive.

[NJmaverick]

7. You know how much smokers cost the public

In cleaning costs, fires and increased healthcare costs. $2 a pack is just a drop in the bucket compared to what their habit costs us.

[Scout1071]

11. Oh, whatever. Then we should have a dumbass tax for people

who start unnecessary wars, drive drunk, and so on and so on.

[NJmaverick]

14. alcohol is already taxed pretty highly

I agree that it would be nice to have a republican tax to pay for their war.

[Scout1071]

21. While we are at it, let's have a fat tax too!

Anyone more than 20 lbs overweight must pay. That's just as harmful to your health as smoking, no?

My point is that everyone has their vices. Can you dig?

PS - I'm a now proud former smoker. :D

[LisaM]

22. They should have taxes on junk food - I agree!

Potato chips, pop, etc.

[NJmaverick]

35. That could be a reasonable tax

Although where would the money go?

[LisaM]

37. Schools, hospitals.

Athletic fields and parks.

[NJmaverick]

34. People don't suffer health problems from second hand fat

Fat people don't start fires. Fat people don't cause places they go to become filthy. Fat people don't pollute the air.

[NashVegas]

36. I Want to Tax Control Freaks

Their constant obsession with other peoples' bad habits raises my stress levels. This is damaging to my health.

[ForPeace]

12. Smokers save us money

Since smokers often die young and don't collect their Social Security and Medicare benefits they may well save us money.:smoke:

[NJmaverick]

13. They get sick more often

They run up the costs of medicare and medicade. You have some chronic and expensive diseases like emphysema that are almost exclusively caused by smoking. Their shorter life span doesn't off set that cost. Plus often they die young and leave windows and children to be supported.

[primavera]

17. I'll be happy to look at your numbers

Until then, I'm not sure that states don't earn more off of cigarette taxes than they spend. Yes, emphysema is caused by smoking, no argument, but do you have any idea what the insurance premiums are for a smoker with emphysema? Smokers pay an amazing amount of money for their life style choice already. I don't know, you could be right, but I'll reserve judgement until I see some actual numbers.

[foreigncorrespondent]

25. Really?

Funny that! I have been smoking for 27 years and it is usually a cold day in hell when I actually get sick.

For private health coverage here in Australia, because I am a smoker, a female, and my age, I would actually pay more than a female of the same age who isn't a smoker. So us smokers do pay for the choice we have made.

[megatherium]

28. The average smoker loses 14 years of his or her life.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control. So maybe you are fine as a smoker. My dad was fine as a two-pack-a-day smoker, then he quit. Twenty five years after he quit, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in five months. It turns out that 87% of lung cancer happens in smokers or former smokers. It turns out that 85% of persons diagnosed with lung cancer die of it, typically in less than one year (only 15% of lung cancer diagnoses are stage I or II which are relatively treatable). In the US, there are 150,000 lung cancers a year in smokers or former smokers. It also turns out that more smokers die of heart disease than lung cancer. All of these risks drop substantially when you quit smoking, but as my dad found out, not all the way back to zero. (Maybe to one-third the risk of an active smoker.)

Sorry if this distresses you. But you need to understand the magnitude of the risk of smoking. It's not comparable to a few drinks, or to not wearing your seatbelt, or to being overweight. It's substantially greater.

By the way, there is a large study in the US to test the value of screening for lung cancer. The latest generations of medical diagnostic imaging machines ("spiral scan CT machines") have enough resolution to detect small tumors in the lungs. So they want to see if regular scans in high-risk people (such as former heavy smokers) would really reduce mortality to lung cancer. Results due in 2009.

Best wishes.

On edit: my father was 73 when he died. He smoked for 27 years before he quit.

[primavera]

16. But that's not how the revenue is spent

Tax revenue from cigarette sales doesn't just go to increased health care costs, it goes to fund schools, roads, any and all sorts of public works. Whenever there's a program people want but don't want to pay for, they just up the tax on cigarettes, since smoking is an indefensible habit. But then again, so is driving a guz-guzzling, emission-belching SUV, yet we don't impose any surcharge on them.

[NJmaverick]

33. The SUVs do pay more since gas is taxed

Gas taxes are usually pretty high to the SUVs do pay that surcharge

[kath]

31. All the fires they cause are VERY expensive - think of all the wildfires

in OK and TX this winter (and elsewhere, of course). Many of them are caused by smokers tossing their cigs out of car windows.
And the FILTH caused by millions and millions of cig butts tossed on the ground - yuck.

And approx 400,000 deaths a year, and all the emphysema, etc, etc.

[underpants]

19. Sin tax + cigs are still very cheap to make

Tax is more than half the cost even here in Va. (cost=$3 a pack I think)

[AngryAmish]

2. Too high taxes always create black markets

Always. If one can get cheap smokes from an Indian reservation then why not fill up your trunk and make $10 a carton?

[laylah]

3. Same thing happened

to me here in Illinois. I, too, had been buying from the NY site. I got a bill for $56 for TWO cartons of cigs. Of course, as I said, I am in Illinois...crooked bastards.

Jenn

[warrens]

6. In Illinios too

After the new Cook County tax kicks in ($2 a pack in COUNTY taxes, never mind state and federal and city), I'm just going to go to Indiana to stock up. Starting this weekend.

[sattahipdeep]

8. It's a felony to transport or sell 15 cartons of cigarettes or more

Stanton said Treasury enforcement officials are skeptical of online cigarette
buyers who say they did not know they were buying illegally.

"If someone told you they could sell you a car without sales tax, or you didn't have to
pay your income tax, would you believe them?" he said.

ok...........so they believe on line buyers r tax dodgers....

course...........they have the price so high that it is the poor that is mainly affected
by the prices.

An that is the plan..........to force poor people to quit smokeing.

:hi:

[booksenkatz]

9. The warmongers want the poor to stop killing themselves

so that they can use poor children as cannon fodder in their never-ending wars.

"Stop killing yourself so that WE can kill you instead!"
:crazy:

/quit smoking in 1998
//don't care if others smoke or not
///so many other issues are more important

[High Plains]

26. When last I looked, Indiana had low cigarette taxes.

I don't feel any obligation whatsoever to buy my cigarettes in any particular state.

[sattahipdeep]

4. So 30% of Americans support terrorist operations

Three online cigarette retailers recently sent to the Department of Revenue
the names of hundreds of people who bought untaxed cigarettes in April.

The three Internet sellers gave the names to the state under a federal law called the Jenkins Act.

estimates the state loses $7 million to $10 million a year in revenue to online cigarette sales.

http://www.no-smoking.org/may05/05-19-05-5.html

--she said she feared state reprisals--

At a Congressional hearing on Monday, Senator Susan Collins
released an unclassified section of the Coast Guard document on
the takeover.

The excerpt read: "There are many intelligence gaps
concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support
terrorist operations, that precludes an overall threat
assessment."

Meanwhile, New Jersey officials are taking legal action to try and
block the deal, and the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey is seeking to annul P&O's 30-year operating licence,
claiming it failed to seek permission for the transfer of ownership.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4757528.stm

[hadrons]

5. "A pack-a-day smoker ..."

I've never been a smoker, but when I look at the price of a pack of cigarette (NYC) I'm amazed how anyone can afford the habit ... are there two-pack-a-day smoker anymore??? My dad was one, but cigarettes were a lot cheap when he was alive

[napi21]

10. I do buy my cigarettes online, and I don't understand why the

State says this is illegal. Of course they're upset that they're not getting their taxes, but they're also upset they're not getting sales tax on any other online sales! I also sell on Ebay, and I am ONLY required to collect sales tax on items I sell in my home state!

As far as I know, Indian tribes do not have to pay tax, and all the online cigarette sellers I've seen are from indian reservations. So just where is the illegality here?

[IsItJustMe]

15. KY is about the cheapest state you can buy them,

[underpants]

18. Does the pack have a state tax stamp on it?

Should be on the top or bottom of the pack. Virginia's was green in color. If it doesn't have that it is illegal.

Period.

Smokeless 7 months this coming Friday :hi:

[High Plains]

20. I just drive to the Indian reservation, and I pay cash.

Fuck these state clowns if they want to impose selective, punitive taxes.

I don't have to buy my cigarettes in their jurisdiction. And I don't.

I already pay taxes.

[sabbat hunter]

23. you realize

that by doing so you are breaking hte law. (as are the indians who sell the cigarettes) by law the cigarettes sold are only supposed to be sold to people on the reservation, but we all know more than that is sold.

i am all for cracking down on these scofflaws. these illegal cigarette sales hurt the govt by taking legitmate taxes and hurts local businesses around the reservation who would have been the ones selling the cigarettes if the laws were enforced.

in NYS you are even required to report and pay sales taxes of any online purchases you made.

[High Plains]

24. I don't see any signs saying cigarettes for Indians only.

And, to tell you the truth, I don't much care. You can call them "legitimate" taxes; I call them a punitive measure aimed at smokers by legislatures too gutless to raise taxes fairly.

And furthermore: "Unjust laws exist," 19th century American Transcendentalist proto-hippie Henry David Thoreau once famously noted. "Shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them and obey them until we succeed, or shall we transgress them at once?"

This is one law I will happily transgress.

[megatherium]

29. I support high taxes on cigarettes

for only one purpose: to fund smoking cessation/prevention programs. Effective programs like the one they had in California a few years ago. Until the legislature pulled the plug, they ran ads showing teenagers how the tobacco companies manipulate them. They ran ads pointing out that a major cause of impotence is smoking. They ran ads dramatizing the high death toll. These ads were clever and reached their target audience effectively. Teen smoking dropped substantially in California. But the tobacco companies got their hooks into the legislature and stopped this. Meanwhile the tobacco companies went right along with their own huge advertising budgets. (They can't run radio or TV ads, but they still run lots of magazine ads, they still sponsor auto race teams, and there are plenty of tobacco placards at every gas station.)

[SOS]

27. And Michigan

will be using these funds to provide low-cost nicotine patches to the poor and working class.
They care about our health!

:rofl:

[RamboLiberal]

30. If you live in Pennsylvania and buy cigs over the internet

look out. I remember reading last week they've hired something like 56 new investigators to go after mainly people who avoid tax on cigarettes. They actually said internet in general, but mentioned they wouldn't be going after someone who bought a book on Amazon, but mainly the people getting cigarettes.

But watch out, if you're buying other things on the internet and avoiding paying your state's sale tax that's probably next.

Uh oh!

[bleedingheart]

32. I know a fellow who bought a car in another state to avoid sales tax

and then he moved to Michigan...where he kept his license from yet another state....

He got pulled over in Ohio for speeding and with his plates from one state, his license from another and his insurance stating he lived in an entirely different state....it created a bit of confusion...and to top it off...he has a somewhat generic name and there were warrants out for a guy with the same name....so the police officer detained him for a while in the back of his car until they could determine if he was the fugitive...the officer gave him a big ticket because of various violations and told him that he had better get his story straight...

In the end I think it cost him a lot more than just paying the freaking taxes...