:rolleyes: If you disagree with the OP, then argue against it, don’t just say “yep, must be the new talking point!” and act as if that means something.
You don’t even have to go that far. Let’s say that Obama leaves the cigarette tax exactly where it is. I don’t smoke, and make less than $250,000 a year.
If I start buying cigarettes, I’ll be paying the cigarette tax, which I’ve never paid before. My taxes have gone up! Obama broke his promise!
But if you didn’t work before and get a job, your taxes will go up too. That’s not a distinction between income-related and sin taxes.
Just pointing out the patently ridiculous idea that Obama’s campaign promise was that no-one’s taxes of any form at all would increase, instead of a promise not to raise specifically income-related taxes above their current level.
Well, they’re the ones paying it.
Yes. He said “any”.
I could, or I could say it was no big gotcha, that it wasn’t a big deal, that it doesn’t make all that much difference, which is what I did. But anyone with two neurons to rub together would notice that.
Regards,
Shodan
I wouldn’t call it a broken promise because it’s a reasonable inference that President Obama wasn’t pledging not to raise cigarette taxes, but the OP’s criticism is a fair one. The bottom line is that **roughly **40 million (disproportionately lower-class) Americans are having their annual tax burden increased by **roughly **$300-$600, which goes against at least the spirit of the President’s campaign pledge.
Besides, tobacco taxes are too high already. The market is warped. For example, here in New York City, a pack of Winstons will now cost about $10, but the Winstons that my father has delivered from Russia wind up costing him $1.60 per pack. That is, cigarettes shipped from North Carolina to New York are six times more expensive than identical cigarettes which are shipped from North Carolina to Russia and *then *to New York. I imagine we can all agree that creating a black market in tobacco is not a good thing, right?
Shodan, why would you interpret what Obama said to mean something so patently ridiculous?
I don’t like Obama or many of his policies either, but I don’t see the need to resort to that type of argument.
Um. Do you have a website?
Not in-thread, on the chance that the mods might have a problem with that.
Also, Shodan, can you confirm that you understood that the tire tax in my example was imposed on the manufacturer, not a purchaser?
Smoking is voluntary. Nobody who makes less than $250K a year has to buy cigarettes. It’s not a tax on anybody because not a single person has to pay it if they don’t want.
The headlines on Drudge and elsewhere calling this a “broken campaign promise” are typically sophist, political demogoguery.
Because the following two statements are not identical-
[ol][li]I am making a firm promise that I will not raise any of your taxes[*]I am making a firm promise that I will not raise any of your taxes except on cigarettes[/ol]Regards,[/li]Shodan
He didn’t raise anybody’s taxes.
His words don’t count because he didn’t say “read my lips” which is the political equivalent of “Simon Says”. And it’s not really a tax, it’s money paid into a common HMA which Congress returns to the public in the form of insurance for children.
If I were a cigarette company I would change my brand name to “Geitners” and sell them out of the back of trucks tax free.
Seriously, the law of unintended consequences may just lower the revenue from this when people gravitate towards roll-your-owns.
As near as I can tell, Politifact doesn’t list that as a campaign promise.
Yes, if the tax is completely voluntary. If money is so tight that this tax affects your income in any significant way, maybe you shouldn’t be smoking in the first place.
That’s my next investigation. I did them years ago. You can get set up for about the cost of a carton. Once you have the machine, its cheap.
sin taxes are a lot like the lottery, its nothing but a self imposed tax people put on themselves. Claiming that Obama raising tobacco taxes is the same thing as raising general taxes is delusional.
it would be like claiming a raise in taxes on cars costing over 100k affects anyone in the lower tax levels is the same thing…
It’s a tax on anybody who buys cigarettes. By that logic, a sales tax isn’t a tax on anybody because nobody has to buy anything, but if some sort of national sales tax was introduced, then people would probably be making the same criticism against Obama, and for much the same reasons. This is a regressive tax, and make it much harder financially for poor people to buy cigarettes.
This may well be outdated information. From the page Magiver linked to
Sounds like the Roll-Your-Own crowd is about to get seriously shafted with a ~2400% increase in taxes on raw tobacco. Pipe smokers may as well switch those corncob pipes around from the front to the back cause they’re getting cornholed too.
On the broader topic of if this constitutes a broken campaign promise, I’ll vote no. This isn’t a tax which is involuntarially imposed on people. People pay exactly as much or as little of this tax as they choose to based on how they purchase and use this product. Taxes people have no control over, SS, Medicare, Income Taxes, those are the taxes I think of when people say they’re raising or lowering taxes on a household.
Capital gains taxes are a trickier question. Because of the nature of Capital Gains, it could be argued they are as avoidable as Excise taxes. Just don’t invest capital in ways which could gain value. That’s kind of nonsensical, but it does open the door to criticism that “No increase in Any taxes” should apply to those we are obliged to pay because of our choices. So I can kind of see an argument there. Still, I don’t think of Federal Excise taxes on tobacco as “my taxes” so I don’t interpret the promise as including them.
Enjoy,
Steven
I just want to point out that the prices for online cigarettes are low because the state/federal tax is not applied at the point of sale. The purchaser is still required to pay the applicable taxes and not doing so is illegal.
So the websites themselves are not violating any law. However, they usually do not implicitly state the above and ignorant purchasers can get in a lot of trouble when the law comes-a-knockin’.