This is just unreal, when will people understand that this country was founded on Tobacco, and those who are going to smoke will do so. These sin taxes do little to stop people from smoking. If they did work we would really be in trouble, since the amount of tax money that is taken in each year is spent already. Now what happens when people stop smoking? Where does the money to fund these programs already on the books come from? Not even mentioning what happens to the people that work for the tobacco companies. While I am not a smoker, I do dip snuff, however for some odd reason most of these new taxes fail to hit that part of the tobacco industry, or if they have I have yet to notice it. If we are going to depend on tobacco taxes for programs, one would think we would need to encourage more people to smoke.
Lets look at it this way, say you have 1000 people who smoke 2 packs per day, everyday for a year. That gives us 730000 packs of smokes sold per year. Now if the tax taken in is $1 per pac sold that gives us a revenue of $730,000 per year. Now we raise the tax up $.12 cents and by doing so we lose 100 smokers. The following year are revenue would be we get am increase of $735,840 seems good, after all we gained some revenue and we lost some smokers. This would be great if it stopped there. We could pretty much count on that revenue to stay about the same. However Congress can’t help themselves by stopping there. Since the majority of smokers are making the least amount of money, those are the ones that we are hurting with this tax. Some can say we are helping them by forcing them to stop. However unless we make smoking illegal, we are forcing people to stop by not giving them the right to decide for themselves.
The first “sin” tax I can understand and it makes some sense. Once again Congress wants to add to this. What’s worse is on one hand they say smoking is bad for you, on the other hand the budget the tax money from smoking to pay for programs. What would happen if people just stopped smoking? How would those programs that are paid for by the sin tax be supported? These programs have nothing to do with smoking for the most part, so having people stop smoking does not eliminate the need for those programs.
Most people can say that since I don’t smoke this does not bother me, but what happens when there is no more money coming in from the smokers sin tax? They have already added a sin tax on booze, next up will be on the number of miles you drive. Great I don’t drive that much so this will not bother me at all. However those of you who make your living by driving or those who have a long trip into work each day, it will bother you.
Just think if your round trip to and from work each day was 50 miles, 250 per week. Now Congress slaps you with a road tax (in addition to what we already pay) They start out small like they did with tobacco and booze, say only $.02. $5 per week, $260.00 per year. That’s not hateful, however once Congress starts down that road (pun intended) there is no stopping how far they will go. First years its only $260. second year it jumps to $350, etc…. It could get to the point that they would have to raise the minium wage just to cover the cost to get to work. Lets not forget the drivers we lose to mass transit, or those who simply retire. So Congress will have to keep raising the “drive” tax in order to pay for the new programs that they have enacted.
If Congress came out and said for the next 2 years we are going to charge everyone an additional $5 per week in order to get the deficit under control, most Americans would go along with it. Provided that the tax did not have an option to renew and the money did not go to anything else except to pay down our national debt. However Congress does not seem to work that way. They would take that money and find a way to spend in on something else.
Just food for thought
