Maybe this has been posted before, but I just now read this. Sen. Dick Durbin introduced new legislation in Sep 2023 to increase taxes on pipe and cigar tobacco. A 16x increase on pipe tobacco and doubling the tax on small cigars and a massive tax hike for premium cigars. Luckily, according to govtrack, it has only 3 sponsers and zero chance of passing.
The primary purpose of the bill is aimed at increasing care for expecting mothers and those who have recently given birth. What this has to do with pipe tobacco.... well, I'll leave that to draw your own conclusions.
Link is
here
Currently the federal pipe tobacco tax is $2.83 a pound, which is about the same as the leaf wholesales for a pound. Let’s say 17.5 cents tax and 17.5 cents leaf cost an ounce. Add 15 cents for labor and processing and the base cost an ounce for our pipe tobacco is fifty cents an ounce.
In Missouri every smoke shop sells cheap, shag cut pipe tobacco for $12 a pound, some of its “enhanced” and puffed up so you get a pillow size bag for $12. Those same shops sell cigarette tubes for a dollar and a quarter a carton of 200.
$30 of tobacco and tubes will make a thousand tasty, good cigarettes, five cartons, all federal taxes paid.
The federal tax on five cartons of commercial cigarettes is fifty dollars, not counting the cost of the cigarettes.
The tax loss to the government is something, but not enough to build one of the four Arleigh Burke class destroyers we buold each year to add to the fleet. It’s chump change.
Where premium pipe tobacco is in danger is to equalize the taxes on cheap shag tobacco and commercial cigarettes the tax per pound should be anout twenty five dollars a pound, on a product the farmers do not get three dollars a pound for the crop.
The intent is to save the children from starting cigarettes, by raising prices.
I’m a geezer, old enough for social security.
I say let the children eat nicotine pouches and leave my pipe tobacco alone.
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