Online Cigarette Customers Get Bill from State

wakebrdr writes "The Michigan Treasury Department has sent bills to state residents who purchased cigarettes online to avoid Michigan's high taxes. One pack-a-day smoker received a bill for $2,500 in back taxes. If a simple subpoena of customer data allows them to easily go after lost cigarette taxes, how long until state treasuries across the country subpoena Amazon.com or other big online retailers to collect unpaid sales taxes?"

Comments

Re:Violation of Smokers' Rights

[duguk]

When you compare tobacco tax revenues with the alleged cost of health treatment, the former far outweighs the latter. In the UK, for example, tobacco tax revenue currently stands at £7 billion a year compared with the £1.5 billion it allegedly costs to tackle 'smoking-related' diseases. (Taxation revenue should of course be even higher - over £10 billion - but the Government has cleverly 'lost' £3 billion by over taxing tobacco and therefore encouraging smugglers and cross-Channel shoppers to buy the product abroad.) Now see why they don't want to ban it that much? Taken from http://www.forestonline.org/output/page22.asp and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2004/10/20/nhs20.xml HTH! Dug