Tobacco Tax 101

[DeeDubya]

Again, not to get too political..

There was no preventing this, and it could have, and will be worse in the future. Tobacco users are a shrinking minority, and as such will never carry the weight needed to stop these actions. I have quite a stockpile of pipe tobacco... probably enough to last me 10 years, and cigars that would last about 2 years if I quit buying them entirely.. which I don't intend to do. I would imagine, with decreased sales due to taxes, manufactures and vendors will eventually be forced to lower prices to remain competitive. We'll see....

The folly of health care funding derived from taxing the ever decreasing use of tobacco is sheer lunacy in my mind. It's entirely unsustainable

I sent letters, (emails), to every political figure imaginable, as I'm sure most of us did.. obviously to no avail... There was no stoping this.

I don't mind contributing to a worthy program like the Childrens Health Insurance. Now if we could just deduct this added tax as a contribution I would gladley pay the increase. They would still get the money, the deterrent to smoking because of higher tobacco prices would still have it's effect and we would get a deduction to lighten the extra cost.

[golfermd]

What we will probably see is the death spiral with taxes like they see in many urban areas. Higher taxes means higher costs of doing business so businesses eventually move to more tax friendly locales to reduce their operating costs. This lowers revenues. In order to again raise revenues they increase the tax rates, which drives more businesses away, causing lower employment, loss of tax reveneues, and higher municipal costs to absorb people displaced by businesses moving out. Am I missing something here? Politicians, gotta love 'em...

[Artyman1200]

Tax those evil smokers to fund the health insurance program for all those poor little children! Our government is such a freakin racket...

[BurnDownKing]

Just another bump in the road like rising gas prices or inflation of bread prices. It will all be ok in the end and in a year no one will remember what happened until the next rate increase happens. If you're going to quit smoking a cigar because of a tax rate increase and you can't afford it, you should probably be finding something you can afford to do. :)

I will do my part, however, and stock up before the tax hike kicks in. My cigar shop said we can buy as much as we want and he'd store it for us and figure out where to put it after the fact if we couldn't bring it all home, so at least he's helping us out in that aspect.

[sammis]

It's too bad my coolers are full, but I do have enough to last a few years

In a few years when tobacco use has declined enough that S-Chip doesn't have enough funding, they'll find another "evil industry" to tax to death.

[bigwhiteash]

If they could/would tax stupidity, all our problems would be solved!

[MasterCylinder]

If they could/would tax stupidity, all our problems would be solved!

Nah... politicians wouldn't want to tax themselves...

[Artyman1200]

Just another bump in the road like rising gas prices or inflation of bread prices. It will all be ok in the end and in a year no one will remember what happened until the next rate increase happens.

I view this tax increase by the federal government as slightly different than just simple inflation. Yeah, we'll probably soon forget about the increase as it's not catastrophic, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be upset about it. This is the same government that owns a majority interest in AIG. It won't be long before it's illegal to bring American made cigars into Cuba...

[DeeDubya]

Uncle Sam's personality is changing.

Gimme All Your Money