Everybody saw it coming. Rush Limbaugh predicted it. We warned people. The Wisconsin Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association wartned people.
But in the end, does the state government really listen to anybody? After all, they know best, right?
Raising taxes on tobacco, while wholly discriminatory and regressive anyway, doesn’t raise revenues like the tax raisers predict.
Duh.
And now the Wisconsin budget is falling millions of dollars short because the state isn’t seeing the tobacco tax gains that it had anticipated. The brain trust worked $449 million into the state’s budget based on estimates on tobacco tax revenue following the tax increase. To date, collections will have to be 11% higher each month between now and the end of the fiscal year to meet that goal.
Oops. This isn’t rocket science, but somehow it still manages to evade those in the state government.
When you raise taxes and force smoking bans in an attempt to coerce people into quitting smoking, and then set budgets based on projected tobacco tax income, you’re probably not going to meet in the middle there.
But then again, smokers can’t win for losing where government is concerned. Now they’re being penalized for smoking and being scorned for not spending enough money on cigarettes.
Shrewd. Real shrewd.
Filed under: Ban Damage, Wisconsin Ban, Wisconsin Culture, anti insanity, economic impact | Tagged: smoking, smoking bans, tobacco taxes, wisconsin budget, wisconsin taxes
Ha so there was an assumption that people who smoke would keep on smoking as much as they did after a price rise? Whatever…. Where I work, if there is a 20 cent increase (so from 10 bucks a packet to 10.20 a packet)on a random brand of smokes the sales of that brand drop DRAMATICALLY. In fact a lot of regulars would go on to buy a different brand that they have never smoked before due to the price rise.
Money is a powerful thing whether people realize it or not…
Cheers dude!
people realize it. Politicians do not. But most politicians can’t see past their own noses when it comes to economics or reality in general…