At some point taxes can get so overwhelming that the black market takes over. For a profit, mind you, for a profit.
Economist magazine reports:
THE busy interstate highway that zips through Richmond, Virginia, and up
to the crowded cities of the north-east has long been a conduit for
handguns bought wholesale in Virginia and sold to drug-dealers in New
York. Now I-95 is siphoning northwards another form of contraband:
black-market cigarettes.
Because Virginia’s tobacco tax is the second-lowest in America, gangsters buy cigarettes there in bulk and sell them at enormous profit in New York and other high-tax states. At a minimum, they pocket a big chunk of the difference between what Virginia adds in tax—30 cents a packet—and the higher rates imposed elsewhere. New York’s tax, at $4.35 a packet, is the highest in the country.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates that sales of illegal cigarettes cost government—local, state and federal—nearly $10 billion a year... Continued>>
Economist magazine reports:
Because Virginia’s tobacco tax is the second-lowest in America, gangsters buy cigarettes there in bulk and sell them at enormous profit in New York and other high-tax states. At a minimum, they pocket a big chunk of the difference between what Virginia adds in tax—30 cents a packet—and the higher rates imposed elsewhere. New York’s tax, at $4.35 a packet, is the highest in the country.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates that sales of illegal cigarettes cost government—local, state and federal—nearly $10 billion a year... Continued>>
