Lifestyle Taxes Go Up in Smoke
Back in the bad old days, we used to call them sin taxes. (Not to be confused with syntaxes for our more advanced readers.) You know the ones: when the government needs to raise some fast cash but can’t risk angering the unwashed masses in their entirety, they jack up fees on nasty habits such as smoking and drinking. Apparently they are now being rebranded as “lifestyle taxes.”
Don’t you feel better already?
The governor of Maryland, one Martin O’Malley, finds his state coffers in the all too common and predictable state of being essentially empty. Like any experienced politician, he’s falling back on the same old playbook described above. In July he jammed a 50% increase in the state’s liquor tax down the collective throats of those evil imbibers of spirits. Not satisfied with the hoped for $88M in revenue, Maryland will now consider a one dollar per pack tax increase on smokers.
It’s probably rather rude of me to point out that the vast majority of these fees will be paid for by the 99%, to borrow the parlance of the recent campers in the Wall Street district. But let us not cloud the issue with facts. We may, however, note that the article linked above mentions Governor O’Malley’s last attempt at enhancing revenue in the form of a 2008 millionaire’s tax on the top 1%. This resulted — and honestly, who could possibly have predicted it — in roughly one third of Maryland’s millionaires fleeing the state and filing no tax return at all the following year.
So how will the sin tax approach work out for him? Prognostication is a dangerous occupation at the best of times, but we do have a few examples to draw upon.
In 2006, Cook County, Illinois, conducted a similar experiment, imposing a two dollar per pack tax on smokes. Amazingly — and honestly, who could have predicted this either — their revenues from the tobacco tax plummeted from $200M in 2006 to $126M in 2010. The more optimistic among you might speculate that this cash flow disaster was the result of a healthier public eschewing their puffing habits and heading out to the local parks to jog and munch on granola bars. But while some number of people likely did kick the habit, local officials admitted that the vast majority of the net loss came from people avoiding the law and patronizing local shops who took their chances selling bootleg goods sans the local tax stamp.
By mining the country will explosive taxes; the politicians have turned the people into their prey.
Look at history…look anywhere and what do you see?
You see, that the tables are always turned back unto the politicians and it is they who become the prey.
Why do they not learn this oft repeated lesson?
You’re still waiting for them to start learning from experience? At this point, I’m beginning to wonder how dumb *you* are (I already know about them…). They *NEVER* learn…in their minds, higher taxes *always* generate more revenue. And taxes can *never* be too high!
Lifestyle tax eh?
So, when does the new AIDS tax kick in for gay men to offset the cost of the hugely expensive AIDS cocktail drugs?
Control over people’s lives is the goal, not raising tax revenue.
The tax revenues are mostly to pay off the same public employee unions that have already reduced many cities, counties, and states to penury.
If it’s income taxes or cigarette taxes, you are correct in pointing out that people will leave the area.
If real estate taxes go up, the victims won’t be able to sell their houses and leave, because nobody can afford to buy a house in a high-tax district.
NO recovery from the housing bubble until all public sector unions are gone
I see many articles written by conservatives, trying to argue logically about liberals. When will you conservatives learn that logic has nothing to do with their thinking. In this particular case, you ask “when will they learn?”. Your unstated assumption is that they don’t know what they are doing. But they know perfectly well that they won’t raise as much as they claim. For them, it’s all about projecting a perception that they are effectively dealing with a problem – in this case, a budget shortfall. They’re accomplishing exactly what they set out to do, which is maintain their power.
Very good – it is not about educating liberals with the “how to” of doing the right thing (but how fervently we wish that were possible!!!!!). It is all about the perception that liberals somehow care that the credit card is maxed out, whimpering that “we need more money” – yet all the time it boils down to their own job security.
One of the lying thief O’Malley’s Demorat predecessors in the governor’s mansion (Donald Scaeffer) used to send undercover Maryland State Police across the state line to Harper’s Ferry, W.Va and watch for Maryland motorists buying discount cigarettes there, then stopping them as they crossed over into “Taxachusetts on the Chesapeake”.
Big Brother is watching, especially when you don’t pay into liberals’ black hole budgets.
When will politicians learn that raising “sin taxes” brings in less revenue than expected?
Never, as DWN points out above. Rick Happ also makes a great point that arguing logically with liberals is a futile pursuit. It takes no thinking, no logic, no reason to be a liberal; it only requires emotion and feeling. “It feels good to raise taxes on tobacco & alcohol. After all, they’re not good for you and they’re not necessities.” But the goal for liberals is not to improve people’s lives – it is to maintain power, also as Happ notes. The liberal playbook: 1. Create a crisis. 2. Offer a ‘solution’ to the crisis. 3. Put the solution into effect. 4. Be nowhere around when the ‘solution’ not only doesn’t work, but makes a bigger mess of things than before. 5. Re-appear to offer a ‘better’ solution to the now-bigger crisis.
Last night on Hannity, Sean repeatedly asked the liberal on the panel should liberals be fired when they cross the line (as was Hank Williams from MNF) – he hem-hawed, tried to change the subject, and ultimately never gave a coherent answer. It was a beautiful verbal beatdown of a liberal moment.
With Maryland being such a small state to begin with, you can, literally drive from the north end to the south end in about an hour, even cracking down on boot leg cigarettes and alcohol won’t help too much.
The Citizens of Maryland are more than welcome to come my home state of Virginia, to Washington DC, or go north in to Pennsylvania to buy their cigarettes and alcohol there.
Same thing happened in the UK and now there is a huge black market in smuggled cigarettes and tobacco, a lot of it fake made in China with who knows what content. The packs are very convincing and they don’t care who they sell to, so much for protecting children. I stopped buying here when they forced the smoking ban on pubs but fortunately live near the Channel and can pop over the Belgium where they are a lot cheaper.
What a hoot! All the points made above are correct, but here’s one the idiots in charge finally DID recognize. They HAD to rebrand “sin” tax –> “lifestyle” tax, because everyone has been catching onto several points. 1) this is a hella regressive tax, and 2) if you’re raising revenue from people’s bad behvr. (I guess assuming they’ll stop said behvr.) then where will those revenues come from?! Do people stop being “bad” people? Nah, they just cross state lines, go black market/underground, or move to something NOT being taxed that’s prob. even worse for ‘em.
It’s the liberals fav. way to go about things: proclaim the moral high road by trying to control every facet of our litte lives (you’re too stupid to realize what’s bad for you, so we’ll take care of that AND teach you a lesson), and steal our money for their latest shenanigan. Endless loop & just as pointless …
It isn’t just “lifestyle tax increases” that fail to bring in as much revenue as promised, it’s all tax rate increases. Virtually none of them bring in as much revenue as promised because they use the failed static analysis technique to make their predictions. In static analysis, a 5% increase in tax rates should result in a 5% increase in revenues. Simple, but wrong because the people aren’t at stupid as the politicians expect. People change their behavior as a result of rate increases, be they in income taxes or “lifestyle taxes.” People will act in their own best interest and do what they can to reduce their tax burden.
First they came for the drinkers (you know how it goes, with a hat tip to Pastor Niemoller), and then for the smokers, and then for the trans fats and then for the salt shakers…. and then they came for me and there was no one left.
If everyone actually stopped smoking and drinking, states would quickly be in a serious cash flow pinch.
This is already happening to gasoline tax revenue as more people car pool, telecommute and cars become more fuel efficient. Of course the response will be to raise these taxes even further.
In Washington DC, the mayor has proposed a popcorn tax on movie goers.
Lemme see here, we needed to conserve water to keep prices down. We conserved water and now they have to raise the price since they are not making “enough” money off it. {spit}.
Some years ago, Kyle Mills wrote a novel, “Smoke Screen”. The thesis was that the tobacco companies just stopped making cigarettes. Eventually, the feds, states, cities saw the light of no tobacco tax revenue. Maybe that might work.
surprise that O”Malley et al have not proposed the legalization of prostitution and state control of the income from the oldest profession. It would on paper bring in the millions that the American politicos need to feed their dirty habit of spending and stealing. Since morality and American politicians are complete opposites there should be no objections from the unwashed masses and their American master class in promoting the sale of human flesh for the purpose of keeping the corrupt empire going.
At last someone has given me a good reason to go to NYC, the sorriest city in North America, except for Washington, D.C. Eleven dollar a package cigarettes. I can buy them black market in Indiana for less than $2 (the premium butts cost $5.40) and sell them in NYC for $5 or $6? Hmmmm.
Good luck with that. At current fuel prices the cost of traveling to NYC from Indiana would more than consume your markup. Kinda like driving 50 miles to save a nickel a gallon on gas. (In fact, this site will tell you whether driving to a cheaper gas station is worth it.) Those black-market cigs currently in the Rotten Apple must have come from a short distance to make selling them below the taxed price profitable.
Surly the politicians imposed the “sin tax’ to stop or impede the consumption of these unhealthy products; not to collect more revenue.