Maybe I’ll Start Smoking

The Smartfella? in a firm believer that, if you hang around with intelligent people, osmosis (or some such thing) will take over and I will become smarter by association (or some such thing).

It appears that smokers are smart people because they are avoiding taxes by buying their cigarettes using a machine that rolls their cancer sticks while they wait. By using these Roll-Your-Own Machines these smart guys are saving somewhere around $21 a carton.

Recent story headline in my newspaper...

Roll-Your-Own Cigarette Machines Help Evade Steep Tax

As I have told you, my dear readers, in a prior posting, throughout history tax payers have come up with ingenious ways to avoid paying their current ruler’s never-ending search for increased revenue. In the Middle Ages a tax was levied based on the number of Windows a homeowner had in his house. The Roll-Your-Own Citizens of that day bricked up their windows and avoided the Window Tax.

We fought the American Revolution over Taxation without Representation. Now we are finding that Taxation with Representation may not be working out as well as our founding fathers had envisioned.

As I peck this Foolishness...Or Is It? out our rulers are formulating ways to combat the decline of this Cigarette Tax Revenue...

• The Assistant Attorney General in New Hampshire is suing Cigarette Rolling Machine Manufacturers.
• There is a loop hole in current law about pipe tobacco being not currently as taxable as cigarette tobacco is taxable.
• These Rolling Machines are using pipe tobacco.
• Your FDA is determining “the appropriate response” and “soliciting industry input to help write new rules to tax pipe tobacco the same as cigarette tobacco.”

It is the Smartfella's? not so humble opinion that all this bureaucratic jockeying about law suits, loopholes, cigarette versus pipe, responses, industry input, etc. is completely unnecessary. The $345,000,000 in Lost Revenue can easily be restored by passing an Evasion of Taxes Surcharge Tax Penalty.

If they would go a bit further and levy a further penalty on the evaders for causing Stress and Mental Anguish to the Tax Collectors, this could be a real boon to the Tax Coffers in every state affected by this evil Cigarette Rolling Machine Scheme.

Would I kid u?