View From The Middle
Taxes On Cigarettes Continue To Go Up In Smoke
By Charles Rogers

I used to smoke. It's been eleven years since I took that sweet, sweet puff on my last, ever-coveted white cheroot (thank you, Mr. Kipling) and pitched it into the nearest sewer. I had smoked not just for years, but for decades , enough that, if I hadn't stopped then, I feel I surely would have been stopped soon, not by a decree from Mayor Bloomberg, but by the great Mayor of All People in the sky.

In most cases, life does go on, however, no matter how hard one persists in this form of suicide.

Frankly, I don't blame myself. When I took up the horrible habit, I was a youngster; heaven knows in my early-to-mid teens and I, like everyone else, had been belted in the face by every form of media with wonderful, enticing tableaux of cigarettes: Dancing packs of Lucky Strike and Old Gold on a TV stage; Pall Mall's pellmelling before me, Chesterfield's calling to me; cajoling me to try their white sticks of delight.

I have all that behind me now, no matter how I stopped. Now, more and more I can look at the New York cigarette problems - pro and con - at least a little more objectively.

Last month, the New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO) came out with an interesting dissertation on cigarettes, their taxes, and what's happening to that tax money.

The IBO says the number of smokers in the city has declined considerably, making Mayor Bloomberg proud as all getout. Besides banning cigarette smoking from bars, etc., there were other "incentives" to get the general public to stop the destructive habit, one of which was more and more (and more!) taxes on a pack of cigarettes, so that, in total, the user is now spending, at retail, $7.50 a pack.

Say what? Seven dollars and fifty cents a pack, you say? Wow! That should get 'em to stop smoking, right?

Wrong!

The Budget Office notes that, even as smoking declined in those early days (2002-or-so), cigarette tax revenue went up. That had to bode well for the mayor and the proposal. Not only were people getting healthier, but the city and state's coffers were getting fuller!

Alas, the euphoria was short lived, of course, when, shortly thereafter, smokers got a little wiser and decided they now had more incentives to seek low-taxed or untaxed cigarettes. IBO said they estimate that roughly $40 million in city revenue was lost last year due to evasion of cigarette taxes - "a loss greater than the tax brought in prior to the 2002 increase," they said.

They say the sales of cigarettes and tobacco products are indeed regulated and cigarettes bought in New York, including Internet and mail order cigarettes shipped to New York addresses, are subject to state and city tax. They quote the law that says, "It is intended that the ultimate incidence of and liability for the tax shall be upon the consumer."

For a long while, people have been buying their cigarettes in bulk from either out-of-state stores, Indian reservations or in a clandestine manner, like liquor during the Prohibition days.

With the first two methods, they can get away with not paying taxes on the first two cartons; on the third method, they can buy as many cartons as they want - at the risk of either getting in trouble with "the mob" or with the I.R.S. (Ya takes yer choice).

So, as the IBO says, the tax increase that leads some people to quit, leads others to search for lower cost cigarettes.

No matter. Be assured that smokers will try and try - and try - again.

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