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The Internet by nature provides bountiful and unprecedented opportunities cheap cigarettes online store to sidestep the law, while the limitations of law enforcement let the ethically challenged exploit these opportunities without losing sleep over getting caught.
Another outstanding cheap cigarettes online example can be cheap cigarettes online store found in a report about cigarette sales over the Internet that was recently prepared by the U.S. General Accounting Office. The 55-page analysis examines how the 50 states are doing collecting excise taxes that are payable on cigarettes sold cheap cigarettes online by the 147 online tobacco merchants the GAO could identify.How are cheap cigarettes online store the states doing? Let's put it this way: Next time someone lights a cigarette near you, try grabbing a handful of the smoke. . . . That's how they're doing.
The report doesn't get at a precise dollar figure for the lost tax revenue but does cite a year-old Forrester Research estimate that U.S. online tobacco sales will reach $5 billion by 2005 and cheap cigarettes online that the states will lose out on $1.4 billion as a result.

"Consumers who use the Internet to buy cigarettes from vendors in cheap cigarettes online store other states are liable for their own state's cigarette excise tax and, in some cases, sales and/or use taxes," the GAO report explains. "States can learn of such purchases and the taxes due when vendors comply with the Jenkins Act."
Ah, the Jenkins Act. There lies the rub between old law and new technology, as the lawmakers who passed the act - in 1949 - obviously knew not of the Internet. Nonetheless, the act cheap cigarettes online requires vendors - including online merchants - who ship cigarettes into another state to anyone other than a licensed distributor to report the details of all such transactions to the tax authorities in those states.
In theory, the recipients cheap cigarettes online of the cigarettes are supposed to pay the taxes or the states will come calling to collect.In practice, precious few smokers pay up, and the governments are in cheap cigarettes online store poor position to collect because only a handful of merchants fulfill their responsibilities under the Jenkins Act. Just how pervasive is the disdain for this law? Some of these online outfits carry revealing names such as Notaxsmokes.com and Dutyfreetaxfree.com, while others cheap cigarettes online store proudly proclaim on their home pages that they do not and will not comply with the Jenkins Act. Their excuses - including claims of cheap cigarettes online exemption by American Indians - are all bogus, according to the GAO.

(All of you who believe it's OK to avoid paying taxes of this kind because you judge cheap cigarettes online store them to be unfair can go get in line with the corporate bigwigs and bean counters who believe the rules are meant for others.)The GAO report says that a violation of the Jenkins Act is only a misdemeanor that carries a maximum $1,000 fine and six months cheap cigarettes online store in the can. Near as the GAO can tell, no one has been fined or jailed.
State officials highly recommend making Jenkins violations a felony.
A good start, but that isn't likely to compel individual smokers to get square with the tax collector, or even deter the merchant violators without an accompanying aggressive enforcement cheap cigarettes online campaign. ludicrously cheap cigarettes online store low cigarette tax is not only hurting Kentuckians by keeping it alluringly cheap to smoke and depriving the state of badly needed revenue. It is also hurting other, more responsible states by turning Kentucky into a haven for Internet cigarette sales. As taxes and prices have gone up cheap cigarettes online almost everywhere else, Internet operations have grown here as ways for buyers to avoid higher taxes in their home states and, worse, for youths to avoid their states' laws against sales to minors.

For now, of course, Kentucky is getting a little extra income from cheap cigarettes online store these Internet sales,since the suppliers do pay the state's measly tax of 3 cents per pack. But that return is coming at a high cheap cigarettes online cost. For one thing, it places Kentucky on the wrong side of the national debate over Internet taxation. States generally agree that Internet transactions shouldn't escape normal state taxes, since that puts local, non-Internet businesses at an unfair disadvantage and since it also allows Internet customers cheap cigarettes online to avoid paying for the cheap cigarettes online store government services they enjoy. For another, the rise of Internet cigarette sellers means Kentucky is now home to businesses cheap cigarettes online that are legally suspect; they seem to be ignoring the minimal age-verification cheap cigarettes online store and reporting requirements already on the books. It's not illegal to buy or sell cigarettes over the Internet, but sellers cheap cigarettes online store and buyers appear to be obliged to report their cheap cigarettes online store purchases and to pay any state taxes owed under the 1949 Jenkins Act. It expressly requires dealers to report out-of-state sales to the buyers' state tobacco tax administrators. But that is not happening, according to Mark Smith, a spokesman for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. "I've yet to see one Internet company cheap cigarettes online out there that is collecting taxes and verifying age," he said. Moreover, added Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, "Internet sales to kids is an emerging and growing problem."

Both the federal government and the state attorney general cheap cigarettes online store must crack down on such suspect practices. But the cheap cigarettes online best solution would be to eliminate the reason for them.
Kentucky should join the vast majority cheap cigarettes online store of other states, whose average cigarette tax is now 58.8 cents per pack, and raise its rate cheap cigarettes online to a level cheap cigarettes online store that is both socially responsible and fiscally productive.