New York has the highest tax on cigarettes. Why? Nonsmokers and the government are trying to control people. This tax is not taxing everyone. It just isn’t fair. It’s a legal substance, and if people choose to smoke, then let them. Fast food, candy, soda and alcohol are also bad for us. Maybe, they should tax those items, too. Health care is rising because people eat so unhealthfully. Don’t blame it on smokers. The government is causing many people to leave the state. Is the plan to push out the middle class and the poor people, to make this a wealthy state? The government officials can fi nd money from other resources if they spent more time on it. Stop trying to control people and take things [away]. I think it is hypercritical. Alcohol is also very unhealthy. Ask an alcoholic at what age they started drinking, and most of them say between 12 and 14. What does that tell you? We all know that government doesn’t care about the people — only money. There are very many people out there who aren’t happy about this and want some answers. SUE MIZEJEWSKI Niskayuna
I am a reformed smoker and have seen many folks suffer with COPD due to smoking......taxes are out of hand.....why? because we are to expensive for ourselves......just like the 'mother country' was living on the back of the American colony back in the day.....so do we live on our own backs, and we have elected a government by the people that we have some how put on top of ourselves while on our backs.........
Time for a Tea Party to meet this monkey and then dump it.........
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
CAPITOL Cigarette tax called a success Smoker’s group calls it harassment BY VALERIE BAUMAN The Associated Press
New York smokers have been sent outside in all kinds of weather, coughed at in disdain, and now they are burdened with the most expensive cigarette taxes in the nation. Now, to add cost to injury, the state is declaring its highest-in-the-nation cigarette tax a success.
New York Health Commissioner Dr. Richard Daines says the evidence is in the spike in calls to the state’s Smoker’s Quitline. The number of people seeking help to quit smoking quadrupled during the week of June 2, when the full $2.75-a-pack tax kicked in, to nearly 10,000 calls. Fewer than 2,300 people called for help during the same week in 2007.
The number of requests for free nicotine replacement therapy starter kits also rose sharply. Smokers calling the Quitline requested nearly 7,900 kits that week, compared with 1,722 requested during the same week last year, according to the Health Department.
“Not everyone that tries, quits,” Daines said. “We estimate about 140,000 New Yorkers will successfully quit smoking. We may have more than a million try to cut down or stop, but this is how you get people to try: give them multiple chances and multiple reasons to stop.”
The increase that took effect June 3 sent the tax from $1.25 to $2.75 per pack. In most of the state, cigarettes range between $6 and $8 a pack depending on brand, and store price. They can cost as much as $10 in New York City, which has its own tax.
Michigan has a $2 tax per pack. Virginia and Kentucky have a tax of 30 cents per pack, both ranking 47th in the nation, according to the Federation of Tax Administrators.
Audrey Silk, who heads NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, says the initial increase quitline calls doesn’t realistically represent how many people will become nonsmokers.
“No matter the goal, it’s disgusting that any group would actually boast that coercive government — this time through the hammer of taxation — to beat a class of society enjoying a legal product into submission is ‘successful’,” Silk said.
“What is really coercive is the disease that tobacco causes,” Daines said. “I’ve seen people die prematurely, lose their loved ones and be confined to home.”
Cigarette smoking kills about 400,000 people in the United States every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 45 million U.S. adults are smokers, though the prevalence has fallen dramatically since the 1960s.
“The reason it’s not unfair is because this tax is helping to make the price that the consumers pay begin to reflect the real cost that cigarettes pose on society as a whole,” said Russell Sciandra, of the Center for a Tobacco Free New York. “If they actually had to pay for all the medical care and lost productivity that cigarettes cost in our society, cigarettes would cost more than $12 a pack.”
I think there should be $1.50 tax on every $ 2.00 bet at the track and OTB with my name ear marked on it........or maybe your name or your name or your name...........I think it should be the same with lotto.........hhhhhmmmmm----
so who will audit the cig tax and where it goes???
no different than the gas tax, lotto, OTB, liquer etc........certainly those BILLIONS of $$$$'s are NOT where they are supposed to be---ehm uhm....uhhhh
By RAMESH SANTANAM, Associated Press Writer Sun Jun 15, 2:14 PM ET
PITTSBURGH - A stiff drink comes with a stiff tax in Pittsburgh and surrounding towns these days, and that has made the county executive public enemy No. 1 in some quarters, reviled by name in song and on bar bills.
Even comedians have gotten into the act, complaining that rising drink tabs meant fewer people coming to see them perform and pouring wine and liquor into a river in a mock restaging of the Boston Tea Party.
The 10 percent drink tax, in effect since January, was pushed along by Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato to subsidize public transit. The two-term Democrat says he had no choice; swallow that, he said, or property taxes would have to be hiked.
Many bar and restaurant owners are frothing over the county surcharge, and are making sure that the name of its sponsor is as well-known as, say, Sam Adams and Jim Beam. With rising fuel and food costs and a weak economy, they say, the tax is just one big fly in their beer.
"I've been in this business for 40 years and I've never seen a more difficult or challenging time," says Kevin Joyce, owner of The Carlton restaurant in downtown Pittsburgh.
Michael McDermott, who was nursing a lager at a downtown pizzeria, says he goes out only two nights a week now instead of three — just the kind of response bar owners fear.
"I cannot afford to drink as much as I used to," says McDermott, 49, of Scott Township.
Signs have appeared in bars telling Onorato, only half in jest, that he is not welcome. Some bar receipts contain the notation "Onorato tax." Online, one Irish balladeer croons: "Remember the tax you pay on every single beer and then tell old Danny boy that he's not welcome here."
One restaurateur even challenged Onorato to a charity boxing match, with the tax's future at stake if he lost. Onorato chose instead to tend bar and give his tips to a Police Athletic League.
Now the brew-haha over the tax, which also applies to six-packs sold at bars, is taking a more serious turn.
A petition drive is about to get under way to try to repeal the 10 percent levy. Friends Against Counterproductive Taxation plans to begin collecting signatures Tuesday to put the issue to a referendum in November.
"He was hoping everyone would have forgotten about the tax," says Tom Baron, president of big Burrito Restaurant Group, which runs 11 eateries in the county. "Instead, he's facing Whiskey Rebellion II."
The original Whiskey Rebellion was in 1794, a tax revolt in which western Pennsylvania residents played a major role. President George Washington fought back by calling up the militia.
Allegheny County will respond to the new Whiskey Rebellion with its own referendum, asking voters to pick between a property tax increase or the drink tax to maintain a transit subsidy required by law.
"I am not budging. They are not going to force a property tax on this county," says Onorato, who has a background as a lawyer and certified public accountant. "I have to do what I have to do and they have to do what they have to do. I will put my faith in voters."
As of March 31, the new drink tax had generated close to $9 million in the county, which has some 2,000 active liquor license-holders.
Opponents say the county is likely to get considerably more than the $32 million it needs to subsidize mass transit. The county executive says any surplus can be used for transportation capital projects.
Philadelphia, on the other side of the state, has had a 10 percent drink tax for 14 years. It helps pay for public schools.
They appear to be among the highest local drink taxes in the country, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade association which opposes the Allegheny County tax.
At Pittsburgh's Church Brew Works, owner Sean Casey isn't posting anti-Onorato signs or otherwise bashing the county executive, but he understands why other bar and restaurant owners might be so angry, especially those in communities where customers can easily hop over to another county for cheaper drinks.
"When you are seeking to decimate somebody's business, a lot of people are going to push back because they've got to protect their families," he says. "Their livelihoods are threatened and they feel cornered."
June 22, 2008 State officials are considering a new approach to collect taxes on sales of tax-free cigarettes sold by Indian retailers.
Negotiators for the state Senate and Assembly tell the Buffalo News they are working on a deal that would make it illegal for tobacco manufacturers to sell cigarettes to any wholesaler who won't stop selling tax-free cigarettes to retailers on the Indian reservations in New York.
Supporters say the state could reap more than $400 million in cigarette excise taxes currently lost to tax-free sales.
Tax-avoidance schemes are expected to worsen since the state recently raised its excise tax to $2.75 per pack.
Main Entry: ter·ri·to·ry Pronunciation: \ˈter-ə-ˌtȯr-ē\ Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural ter·ri·to·ries Etymology: Middle English, from Latin territorium, literally, land around a town, from terra land — more at terrace Date: 14th century 1 a: a geographic area belonging to or under the jurisdiction of a governmental authority b: an administrative subdivision of a country c: a part of the United States not included within any state but organized with a separate legislature d: a geographic area (as a colonial possession) dependent on an external government but having some degree of autonomy 2 a: an indeterminate geographic area b: a field of knowledge or interest 3 a: an assigned area; especially : one in which a sales representative or distributor operates b: an area often including a nesting or denning site and a variable foraging range that is occupied and defended by an animal or group of animals — go with the territory or come with the territory : to be a natural or unavoidable aspect or accompaniment of a particular situation, position, or field
My guess would be that they are making new treaties or new definitions with legal mumbo-jumbo..........they dont understand it any of it or understand it so well that the next forms of language they shall use will be that which has 'sovereign' meaning........$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
The latest data shows that Cigarette smokers are just moving to items with lesser or no ta on them. Cigarillos, Cigars, Chew, and Snuff are all on the upsurge. Just shifted the way people buy, not having an effect on actual tobacco usage.
But here's a question, what happens to all those revenues if people do stop buying cigarettes? Where/how will the State make up those revenues?
But here's a question, what happens to all those revenues if people do stop buying cigarettes? Where/how will the State make up those revenues?
That is the million dollar question that everyone is asking. Especially since NYS has a Quit Hot Line to help people quit smoking. Although I have my doubts on the number of people actually quitting. I hear most people are just switching to a cheaper brand of cigarettes or turning to other alternatives as JRaup posted.
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