Cigarette Tax Press Conference

Crain's Insider is reporting on the small business press conference on the cigarette tax increase fiasco that is scheduled for Thursday at 11:00 am. As we have mentioned the event will be keynoted by Council member Koppell who as NYS AG in 1994 argued the legality of taxing Indian retailers and won the case 9-0.

Now we've seen that Speaker Quinn has made some positive noises concerning the Bloomberg 50 cents tax hike proposal but it should behoove her to fully examine the Indian retailer loophole before she signs off on this confiscatory tax. The reality is, as our friends at NYACS underscore, that the state as well as the city could garner hundreds of millions of dollars of additional revenues if this loophole is closed. Otherwise, in NYACS words, we're just chasing customers to the "tax free side of the street."