The New York Post reports:
New York state cigarette tax collections have plunged by about $400 million over the past five years, according to figures and estimates from the office of New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
There's more:
sales of taxed cigs in New York are off by 54 percent in the past decade, which is also cutting into the profits of local store owners peddling smokes. In that same period, about 19 percent of New Yorkers stopped smoking, a pace well below the huge sales dip.
“The Germans call it ‘schadenfreude’ when you take pleasure from another person’s misfortune,” noted Dan Mitchell, a tax expert at the Washington DC-based Cato Institute, commenting on the New York smoking tax fiasco.
The law of diminishing returns applies to taxation. Just a reminder.
