This is the senate revision that will go the floor for debate this coming Monday. Fortunately it looks like snuff will escape with a minimal tax increase._ TO: CAA Member Companies FROM: Norman Sharp Below is a link which will take you to S.275, the 285-page version of the SCHIP bill reported out of the Senate Finance Committee today. The revenue provisions begin on page 271. The bill will be brought to the Senate floor on Monday evening, January 26th and debate is expected to take up much of the week. To fund the $300 million dental insurance provision adopted in committee, the excise tax on large cigars will be 52.75% with a cap of 40.26 cents. The cigarette tax goes up 2/3 of a cent to $1.0066 per pack. Little cigars also go up to $1.0066 per pack or $50.33 per 1,000 without any phase-in as provided for in the House version. Snuff goes up to $1.51 per pound, chewing tobacco up to 50.33 cents per pound, pipe tobacco up to $2.8311 per pound and ryo tobacco up to $24.78 per pound. The effective date remains April 1, 2009 and the floor stocks tax on all products except large cigars is due August 1, 2009. _Senate SCHIP, full PDF
Any bump is not a good thing but at least it was a small one.
RYO is still really atrocious, but at least this isn’t going to hurt snus or snuff much.
Now is the term ‘snuff’ to refer to all fine ground tobacco as the term snuff means or does it just cover what is more commonly known as snuff in the US, moist oral tobacco. Nasal snuff & oral snuff are different categories. Moist snuff is different than chewing tobacco, so moist oral snuff wouldn’t be under same category as chewing tobacco. I guess retailers could get around the high RYO tax by selling it as chewing tobacco.
are they still planning to ban mail order?