Stop the outrage! Protect our taxpayers

Welcome back to school, kids! As the lazy days of summer come to an end, let’s pack our bags, sharpen our pencils, and get down to the serious business of the people.

In the weeks ahead in both Albany and Washington, it’ll be time to make the tough decisions. New York state is operating with a $9.2 billion budget deficit, its worst since the Great Depression.

The only way to start chipping away at that number is through immediate and decisive action to raise revenue. For this reason, I’m infuriated by the decision of Federal Judge Richard Arcara to halt the state’s plan to tax the wholesalers who provide Native American tribes with cigarettes, just hours before the tax collection was to go into effect.

I’ve written on this topic before, and feel strongly about it. By law, Native Americans can sell cigarettes tax-free to members of their reservations. This law was put in place after years of legal maneuvering and the conclusion that Native Americans have a right to sovereignty and paid their “fair share” when they lost most of their aboriginal lands hundreds of years ago.

However, no law or treaty states that cigarettes can be sold to people outside the reservation tax-free, and yet the law is blatantly ignored as sales taxes continue to go uncollected. The failure to collect these taxes has cost our state hundreds of millions of dollars in estimated revenue per year. In June, Governor Paterson drew a line in the sand and promised taxpayers that he would require wholesalers to prepay taxes before selling cigarettes to the Native American reservations.

This is a brilliantly designed tax. Since it will tax wholesalers and not the tribes themselves, wholesalers will have to tack on the tax before selling cigarettes to the reservations or be forced to pay the $4.35-per-pack tax themselves and forfeit profit.

By blocking the state from imposing this tax on wholesalers, our courts have once again given in to the dishonesty of Native American leaders, who have made millions off the appeasement by state lawmakers. It’s time they were held accountable for their illicit cigarette sales!