National Sin Tax Bill

[Sam Spade]

Just so you know, sin taxes are never the cash cow they're supposed to be.  Be sure to do some calculus as to how much money this will bring in before voting.  You'll be surprised at how meager the additional income actually is.

^^^^^^^^

[Sam Spade]

I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but when you say a 2% tax on cigarettes, are we talking about a pack of cigarettes, a carton of cigarettes or a cigarette.  Same goes with alcohol and the like.

My more pertinent question goes with this logic.

The current federal excise tax on cigarettes is 39c per pack.  The average price per cigarettes, as far as I can figure out is roughly $4.00 per pack over the 50 states (some more, some less).  This present tax would produce a revenue of somewhere between 7c to 8c per pack.

However, with the addition Clause 5 of this legislation, the federal excise tax against cigarettes is repealed (unless you want to clarify sin taxes as not being excise taxes, which I simply don't agree).

So, essentially, you've replaced the 39c federal excise tax on cigarettes with a 7c to 8c excise tax on cigarettes.

I haven't looked up the results with alcohol, though I will if anyone cares.

Just some food for thought.

[Sam Spade]

I probably should have mentioned this earlier

Probably.

Yeah, I apologize on that.  But I thought someone would have looked up these figures before voting.

Anyway, it's excise taxes.  It's not like this bill is going to be any big improvement or loss to the federal budget as a whole, frankly.  Might actually ease the black market trade in cigarettes, actually.

[Sam Spade]

I probably should have mentioned this earlier

Probably.

Don't you mind Sam, I noticed it.
(I didn't look up the figures, but yeah I was quite sure that this was actually a reduction of taxes.)

I figured you probabyl did, but as GM, I probably should have let the Senate know what they were passing before they did.

Unless they really did want to lower taxes (and were playing a bit of reverse psychology).