Due to family illness, my wife and I with our two children in tow, found ourselves in Tennessee two years ago. After dropping me off and securing our hotel room, my wife went about the task of picking up a few things that we needed before returning to my parents house to meet back up with me. Among the items.... a pack of cigarettes for each of us. Not being familiar with the cost of living 900 miles from home, we knew that some things would no doubt take us by surprise. We had heard that some things were cheaper while others were relatively the same. Stopping at a gas station, my wife requested our individual brands and when told how much was owed she immediately thought that the clerk had made an error and reiterated "No sir,.....I need two packs.". Then came the realization that it was the price for both. That's right, my fellow Observer, cigarettes in Connecticut are twice the price than they are in Tennessee. Welcome to the wacky, greedy, ridiculous, money grubbing, deceitful, infuriatingly unfair world of excise taxes.
Yes, my loyal reader, if you have a vice, the federal, state or local government has a tax for it. Tobacco, booze, gambling, soda, candy and pornography, just to name a few. Not only are these items taxed, they are taxed excessively to the point that black markets now exist for some of them. Since state excise taxes vary, it has become a common trend to buy certain products in volume in a lower taxed state and sell them in a higher at a price between the two excise taxes to make a profit. So, in essence, our legislators have encouraged crime by virtue of their own greed.
Taxes, in general, are a very simple thing. Based on income and family situation, everyone pays a certain percentage of said income into a general fund that supports not only the country but our communities as well. Although the ones who make the most seem to find a way to pay the least (percentage wise)..... but that's a story for another article. Excise taxes, however, do not work that way. An excise tax "singles out" a type of person that uses a certain product, taxes that product at a high rate and adds that money to the general fund. So in simple reality, people who do not pay excise taxes benefit from services provided by the general fund that they did not pay for. How can this be? Again, simple. Two ways. First, the government taxes products hat they know we will buy regardless of the price. Either products we are addicted to such as tobacco and alcohol or things they know we need such as gasoline and fuel oil. Second, they tax people, like smokers, who are now in the minority and can't make a enough of a stand to vote the legislators out or get the tax repealed simply because they don't have the numbers to effect change. Even though they pay billions in federal and state excise taxes.
And the reason these taxes are implemented?..... Our own good.... of course! We all should realize that most of these products are bad for our health or have morality issues and we shouldn't be using them in the first place. And here I thought I voted for a senator.... not a nursemaid..... Silly Me! If you'll allow me, I'm going to focus on cigarette smokers as a point of reference. Even though I personally quit a year ago, my wife still smokes and between the two of us we have paid enough in excise taxes over the years to have a few dogs in this fight. Smokers were told that the taxes they were being levied with were being used to offset the cost of smoke related illnesses, education and smoking succession efforts. Fair enough to a certain point, but this really didn't make sense to me from the get go. Didn't the lawsuits against "big tobacco" that the states won billions of judgment dollars in supposed to take care of the gap in healthcare funds? Didn't they win their cases on that very point? The "education" part seemed to stop with our government banning Joe Camel from billboards and T-shirts that we got from collecting "miles". And if they were so proactive in getting us to quit then why with over 17 excise tax increases within the last 25 years, federal and state, only 2 included provisions to help fund smoking succession programs? On top of that little nic-fit tidbit, the last time the state of Connecticut passed a tax increase on cigarettes, legislation was introduced, hand in hand, to implement a tax on hard candy and gum and passed the tax with barely any opposition. If they don't get us with the smokes, they'll get us with what we use to help kick the Marlboro monkey off our backs. All this government anal smoke blowing started with the "big tobacco" wins. After winning their respective judgments, legislators realized what a money maker it was and decided to go after the individual smoker as well. Suing the tobacco companies was a finite source while taxing the individual could go on for as long as people smoked. And not only did they go after our money, they decided that they could tell us where to smoke as well. Smoking bans in public places, at universities, state buildings, schools and parks were put in place because people considered it a health risk, were offended by it or just plain didn't like it. I'll tell you what they do like.... our money.... Oh, they like that! We're not allowed to smoke on the sidewalk but they'll use our money to build it though. They won't "just say no" to cash that didn't come out of their pocket, will they?
Now lets crunch some numbers, shall we.... that's always fun, informative and enraging. Focusing again on smokers, the latest CDC report states that 17.8% of the adult population smokes. That's 42.1 million people in the U.S. and 637,000 people in Connecticut.
The federal excise tax per pack is $1.01
The Connecticut excise tax per pack is $3.40
The average smoker buys a pack per day.
The federal government takes in $42,521,000.00 per day.
The state of Connecticut takes in $2,165,800 per day.
By the numbers above the federal government receives roughly 12 billion dollars per year while Connecticut brings in just under 1 billion and that's just on cigarettes. I'm going to repeat that..... Just Cigarettes! How can our government, federal or local, even think about telling us that we are broke? What are they doing with all that money? Going to Vegas and playing Keno? A deficit?.... Really?..... With this much money coming in on just one product? Think about that for a minute and then add on income taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes on liquor, gasoline, fuel oil, gambling, candy, soda and pornography, property taxes, motor vehicle taxes, DMV fees, toll booths, state lotteries, state park fees, public transportation fees, parking fees, police fines, dog licenses and late fees at your local library and you will soon realize that our government is one of the worst mismanaged corporations in the history of business.
The fact is that excise taxes have created a new form of addict. Just like the products that they tax their constituents on, legislators have become addicted to the money raised by the taxes on them. There lies the problem inherent. As more and more people get fed up with paying more than their fair share by buying these products, find illegal ways to obtain them or simply can't afford the cost anymore and stop using them, it creates a deficit in collected funds. The only way to recoup that lost money is to raise the tax again and again and again. That's why they don't work and they never will. They are a Band-Aid on a broken leg and no matter how much our leaders think they are working, they're not. While our government scrambles to find new ways to make money off of our vices or fads, we all have to remember something that we learned in grammar school. A simple lesson about a certain party that had to do with an excise tax on a certain beverage, say about..... oh....240 years ago. Strictly an Observation. If you'll excuse me, my tea kettle is boiling.
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