New York Tobacco Tax Evasion Information Site

It is simply amazing to us how conventional wisdom, devoid of any data that would suggest its veracity, begins to permeate in certain quarters. So it is with the issue of Indian cigarette retail tax avoidance. When we last left the discussion, Senator Carl Kruger was presenting a demand note to the governor to begin enforcing the law forthwith. In making his demand he posited the figure of $135 million per month as a receivable that the state could begin to collect immediately. Soon after Kruger had made the demand, the conventional wisdom hyenas-in the media as well as in government-let loose on the Brooklyn lawmaker, accusing him of vastly inflating these uncollected funds.

Senator Carl Kruger, who has mysteriously-and mistakenly-been identified as a stalking horse for organized labor by the NY Times, and as a budget cutting ditherer as well for his refusal to go along with the governor’s proposed cuts to education and health care, is about to turn the tables on the state’s chief executive. He will do so by presenting Paterson with a letter demanding that he rescind the so-called letter of forbearance that had been issued on behalf of New York’s Indian cigarette retailers in 2006.

On October 27th, the New York Senate Committee on Investigations and Government Operations heard both sides of New York’s tax-free cigarette issue. Watch video of the entire hearing right here…