Dubious Behavior on taxes - Granite Grok

Dubious Behavior on taxes

Living here in NH, we have no sales or income tax (that is, yet – Liberal Dems & extremely misguided Republicans want to change that – I predict a real hard charge for a broadbased tax to cover up the fiscal insanity that the Dems in Concord have wreaked upon us lowly citizens-as-ATMs).  Thus, this post from Betsy’s Page brought up a couple of thoughts:

For all those who seem to think that raising taxes will not alter behavior, they should pay attention to what happens in states that try to fund health plans by taxing cigarettes.

I have always thought it was a dumb extremely stupid idea to tax something that you wish to get rid of but target that tax to fund a high priority "something" (like healthcare).  PERHAPS, decent social policy, but rotten fiscal policy as sooner or later, that-which-is-taxed runs out, along with its tax money. 

If Nanny-State / Fascist politicians actually believed what they say they do ("we know what is best for you so we will force you to stop smoking"), they should just outright make it illegal (uh-huh that’s not going to happen; maybe they haven’t forgotten lesson is that was Prohibition). 

But, the taxers forgot that there are alternative reactions to high taxation on things like tobacco – not only might they get some cessation of the behavior ("too expensive for me!") such as this:

Guess what people do? As the WSJ writes today, they try to evade the tax. In Maryland they raised the tax to $2 a pack to fund health care plans and found that cigarette sales have fallen 25%.

Ah, people decided to quit the habit? Good news socially, but not fiscally, right? Er, not so fast.

People travel to Virginia to buy cigarettes.

Oh, those pesky citizens that just don’t want to pay their fair share!  How DARE they?  So, what are we going to do?

And so Maryland politicians are trying to outlaw the free travel of consumers to buy a product in a different state.

The Maryland pols are so afraid this is true that they’ve made it a crime for residents to carry two packs of cigarettes that weren’t purchased in the state. In other words, the state says it’s legal to smoke, so long as you use cigarettes that the government can tax and thus become a financial partner in your bad habit. But if you dare to buy smokes across state lines, you can be fined.

Good luck with enforcing that law. Are they going to set up police barricades at the state border to make sure that no one is bringing back two packs? I thought that one of the motivations for our federal Constitution was to prevent one state from taxing another state’s imports into that state. Barring those purchases entirely is an astounding reach of state power.

Betsy (and all good liberty minded people) rightly treat this idea with derision.  Problem is, it already is happening.  Like I said above, NH has no sales or income taxes.  Thus, no tax on alcohol or tobacco products.  If you travel north from MA, you can see the state owned "packies" at "rest areas" along Rt 93 so you see lots of MA license plates.

Problem is, not all of them are just MA citizens.  The Peoples’ Republic of MA has state law enforcement has agents (think up to a couple of HOURS travel north) in these parking lots busily scribbling down plate numbers of cars going south.

For later inspection.  Which they will do.  In MA.

They do fine these rotten, miserable, unwilling-to-pay-their-fair-share citizens whose only crime is really to avoid paying confiscatory taxes set by politicians that can’t keep their own hands in their own pants.

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