Roll-Your-Own: Good News for Smokers, Upsetting to Others
31.12.69
Smokers who have seen the cost of packs and cartons of cigarettes rival that of a week's pay in poorer countries are happy to see Muskego's newest business: Roll-N-Go Tobacco.
Co-owner Dave Dassow said people have been stopping in to try the alternative to prepacked cigarettes, which saves them about 50 percent of the cost. The trade off is that they have to roll their own (RYO). Or, more technically, have the tobacco 'blown' into a paper tube in a large machine.
Customers pick the loose tobacco blend and load the machine, which costs store owners an average $32,000 to purchase, watching as the individual cigarettes are created and deposited in a chute for them to box up. It takes about eight minutes (or 25 cigarettes per minute) to get a carton of cigarettes made.
Source: Patch.com
Smokers dodge cigarette tax by switching to pipes, cigars
31.12.69
Sales of pipe tobacco and large cigars, both taxed at a lower rate, have soared as smokers have adjusted their buying habits to the new price structure.
The shift cost the federal government $615 million to $1.1 billion in uncollected tax revenue from April 2009 to September 2011, the report said. It did not estimate how much individual states may have lost in uncollected taxes.
"That's real money and a tax avoidance scheme Congress ought to be interested in stopping," said Gregg Haifley, associate director of federal relations at the American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network. "It's also counterproductive for the public health benefit of tobacco taxes."
Source: USA TODAY
Several States Pass RYO Tax Bills
31.12.69
, &Quot;The Washington bill signed into law by the governor will level the playing field between RYO machine operators and traditional cigarette retailers by equalizing the tobacco tax paid by RYO store operators with the state's $3.02 per pack cigarette tax. The RYO law enacted in Iowa is similar in that it requires RYO machine operators to pay a per-stick state excise tax. In Oklahoma, the bill passed by the legislature and sent to the governor for consideration would ban the use of commercial RYO machines except in adult-only, age-restricted facilities and require the operator to obtain a federal permit from the Alcohol & Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau to operate as a cigarette manufacturer."
Source: CSPnet.com