I don’t smoke and neither do any close family members but cigarette taxes make furious. It is all about taking money just because they can then spending it on something else. They COULD spend most of that money on anti-smoking programs and treatment for those trying to quit. They could make nicotine gum very cheap through subsidy programs or they could quit fucking around and jack up the price of cigarettes to $20 a pack so that most people couldn’t afford them anymore at all.
Instead, they are fooling around with price points to generate the most amount of taxes without actually addressing the underlying problems. That isn’t what is what supposed to be about. Combine that with the tobacco company settlements and you have a finger waving crisis that people really don’t want to go away for real.
Talk about your blue laws this one albeit unrelated to booze or smokes has to be one of the goofiest. By the way, that town is dry, and you can’t buy things like Orange Juice, or rent movies on Sunday either. Oy.
On to the OP. I live near enough to Indiana (who has a low smoke tax) that my friends who smoke travel there (note, travel, not order in a trackable way online) and buy a bunch at a time, and come on back over. Of course, you’ve got to watch the cops, because of the interstate limits, but still, way cheaper than getting fisted by the State of New Fucking Jersey.
[sidenote] What’s with not being able to pump your own petrol in that state anyhow? Somebody’s politican uncle the head of the gas pumpers union? [/sidenote]
That’s what they tell me. When I get sick from lung cancer and stroke, I’m guessing that the state is going to pick up the entire tab. After all, I’ve paid into the system as much as anyone else.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t some of these cig taxes up for vote? What I want to know are who these boneheads are that vote yes. Probably that same people who voted to abolish rent control. “I get to make people other than me pay more? Where do I sign?”
When it’s 17 degrees with a wind chill knocking it down to 20 below, I’m pretty damn happy to sit in my car and let someone else make their $5.51/hour.
I don’t understand why other people seem to enjoy pumping gas so much. I did for 3 years in California and I don’t miss it back here. We have relatively cheap gas prices and that is with Pumping thrown in.
Of course it’s a safe assumption, you silly man, you! Just ask any of the people pushing for the higher fees and taxes. They have your best interests at heart. They know what’s best. Trust them.
Hell, they helped make it illegal to smoke within 50 feet of an entrance to a public building.* With that limitation the car insurance companies are next in line for all the smokers that are run over. It seems knee-jerk now, but I can honestly see the day where your car insurance is based on being a smoker. I keep getting kicked around over the smoking issue, but it’s been happening for so many years nothing will surprise me.
*they tried that shit here, and had to settle for 5 feet. I make sure I’m 6 feet (yes, I measured it) out of respect for non-smokers. The smoking area is on the alley side of the building. The entrance is one of 6 and the only one smoker’s congregate at. Non-smoker’s have 5 other choices, all more convenient to get to than the alley entrance. Not really an issue in the grand scheme of things, we accept we’re relegated to the alley.
We accept that our efforts for funding public health care are unpopular, but we plod along. We take heart in knowing we’re actively helping the poor have access to medical care, even though our premiums for health care rise incessantly for using tobacco.
Some people just don’t understand that without smokers, there are a lot of poor families that would have no access to health care. No, it’s not hyperbole. Every time the taxes are raised or a new fee is implemented, it’s to pay for the health care of the disadvantaged (I ain’t fucking advantaged and I pay $300 a month for insurance for my wife and I).
That said, I’m going to light up now. I feel like saving a child. (Don’t get me started on the money my parents paid into SS and Medicare then died a few years before collecting.)
That’s the best thing about New Fucking Jersey (or Fucking New Jersey of Fuckin’ Joisey - take your pick). If the NY Giants didn’t play at the Meadowlands, it would be the only good thing about New Jersey
We thought interstate purchases were exempt as well. Then Illinois sent us the letter. Luckily we only owed like $30 when they informed us we had to pay. It really sucks, but we got out cheap. This happened years ago.
My mother-in-law, on the other hand, really got screwed. The state took YEARS to compile the paperwork to turn over to the county so they could get their pound of flesh. The county then actually had the balls to charge my MIL interest on the unpaid taxes that she didn’t know she owed to the county, because the state dragged their feet. How fucked up is that?
Ah, Kalhoun, you innocent child.
I once owed on an excise tax over and above the normal corporate income tax here in NJ, many years ago, on an attempt to start my own business. My accountant slipped a decimal place, and I paid 5 instead of 50 dollars, or something like that. I remember the amount actually owed was something like that 50 bucks, but when they got through with interest & penalties, it was $250 that I owed.
I remember thinking, “Ye gods, what if I had been an actual success???” Thank God I was a screw-up as an independent businessman.
Anyways, first off, it’s “Fuckin’ Joisey”. I’m surprised anyone thinks it’s anything else.
In NYC, where I came from, no supermarkets sell liquor at all, so I’m livin’ the high life over here, where I can get my wine with my food, as God intended. I even managed to inadvertently skirt the blue laws about selling liquor before noon on God’s Intended Day of Rest & Sobriety this past week, because the convenience store I went to had a clerk who obviously had no idea he wasn’t supposed to sell it before noon. I wasn’t about to tell him. I got out of there with milk for my breakfast and wine for my dinner.
As God, or maybe it was just Bacchus, intended. Whatever.
Okay, I have a question. If I physically drive to, say, New Hampshire and buy, say, 20 cartons of smokes for my own personal use, and do this maybe twice a year to support my habit, am I breaking any laws?
Bad idea. Taxes aren’t like being behind on payments for your Mervyn’s card. Tax evasion is how they catch many big criminals (organized crime, drug dealing, etc.) They have the knowledge to find you and the power to make your life suck forever.
Call them up and work out a payment plan. They do not want to bankrupt you, but they do want their money. They’ll help you find a plan that works.
Mostly because no one cares enough to push for them to be struck down. It wouldn’t be a good proposition for the liquor stores–they’d have to be open an extra day, and people aren’t going to buy more booze just because the stores are open six days instead of seven, or at least not enough more to justify the extra operating cost.
Meanwhile, we consumers faced with the horrifying proposition of sobriety on a Sunday find it far easier to maintain a Sunday Stash than to fight city hall.
Technically, probably. Most states limit personal use exemptions to about a carton. You could drive to N.H. every week and buy one carton, and you’d be OK. Have fun!
Blue laws are up top the local jurisdiction and the reason for them, in addition to the restrictions themselves vary widely. In my experience, most of NJ’s silly laws don’t have to do with religion, they have to do with money. Paramus has 2 of the state’s hugest malls and also has blue laws which requires merchants to close on Sundays. Has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with congestion. Go to Garden State Plaza or Paramus Park mall on a Saturday and you’ll see why. Because of their proximity to NYC and NYC’s sales tax laws, Paramus gets inundated with New Yorkers doing their shopping. The locals wanted to have one day per weekend to go to the supermarket and not have to wait in 2 hours of mall traffic to do so.
Another of NJs silly laws is that we can’t pump our own gas. Want some cheap entertainment? Take a road trip with a lifelong Jerseyite and ask them to pump the gas while you use the bathroom. Many folks from Jersey have never pumped gas. The reason for the law? NJ sales tax laws. One of the hitches in determining to what extent taxes apply is whether there is a service involved with “essential items”. For example, you get a cup of coffee at Starbucks and it’s taxed because someone poured it for you. You go the gas station on the corner and pour your own coffee and there’s no sales tax. So if you pumped your own gas, the tax would have to be much lower (and by the way, the New Yorkers also come over here by the hundreds to buy gas too because it’s so much cheaper). I live just about on the state line. If I buy gas a half mile south of my house, it’s $2.09 a gallon and full service. I go a mile north to the Warwick, NY station and it’s $2.79 a gallon self serve.
