Has anyone else noticed the media singing the praises of the new federal tobacco tax?
The tax adds $.62 cents to a pack of cigarettes Georgians buy. It also taxes cigars and other types of tobacco products.
But if you read this article, by Craig Schneider, you might believe that using the power to tax for anything other than the direct funding of government operations, is a pretty good idea. It appears, given the rather muted reaction to the tobacco tax, that a majority of Americans have no problem with sin taxes.
After all, we all agree smoking isn’t good for you. Even smokers know that. And isn’t it the job of government to find ways to force you not to do what it deems to be bad for you?
When you put it like that it suddenly isn’t quite as appealing is it? Suddenly you get this niggling little feeling in the back of your mind that perhaps giving government the power to use taxes to punish behavior isn’t a particularly wise idea. Especially if government also retains the ability to decide what constitutes behavior it wants to punish.
When it comes to smoking, non-smokers are less likely to be disturbed by government actions which help curb a habit they consider offensive. But what if it was something which had nothing to do with smoking? What if government decided that ice cream was something which could damage your health to the extent that it is dangerous and to combat that threat it imposed a punitive federal tax on it to try to break the public’s ice cream habit.
There’d be a revolt, wouldn’t there? Most people would say, “it is none of the government’s business”. We’d see an increase in homemade ice cream. Our representatives in government would get an ear full.
Certainly there are arguments that smoking effects more than just the smoker. But that’s really not germane to the point that the power to increase taxes on substances or behavior the government doesn’t like grants government too broad a power that is ripe for abuse.
And, should government successfully take over health-care in this country, given the precedent the tobacco tax sets, you can rest assured it will certainly tax behavior or substances that may possibly drive up health care costs – for your own good, of course.
Who know, perhaps an ice cream tax isn’t such a far-fetched idea after all.
Comments
I am against these 'sin' taxes as well. For many of the reasons you list, but also because the government comes to depend on the tax as it's working revenue. If they get what they say they want 'fewer people smoking', they'll have less collected taxes - and they'll wonder why they are running a deficit.
To Me again,
The government will know well the reason. It then becomes the question of which sin to tax next. In New York it is now sugared soft drinks, but not diet soft drinks. In Ga, Pepsi perhaps and not Coke? We'll see!
Me again says:
<blockquote>they'll have less collected taxes - and they'll wonder why they are running a deficit.</blockquote>
but they won't, and therein lies the problem. If tax revenues decrease, some other thing, activity or what have you will be taxed to temporarily eliminate said deficit. When that thing, activity or whatever no longer brings home the increasingly expensive bacon (nitrates, you know), more punitive taxes will be levied. This form of reasoning calls to mind Ouroboros in that the cycle defeats itself. After all sin taxes are implemented and those sins are driven underground or ceased, where in the blue hell do the tax revenues come from? Unfortunately, extending the logic is not a primary consideration for legislators.
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