Wednesday, September 23 2009
By Charles Thompson
PennLive.com
Taxing all tobacco products might have seemed an easy decision in a year in which everything that could raise a buck for state government was on the table.
Legislators considered extending state tobacco taxes to cigars, chewing tobacco and other tobacco products that have never been taxed here, making Pennsylvania the only state in the nation that doesn’t tax such products.
The idea would have netted at least $50 million — or more depending upon how the tax would have been structured — on a yearly basis for state coffers.
Gov. Ed Rendell wanted to extend the tax.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the framework of a $27.9 billion spending plan that would raise nearly $700 million in new or higher taxes on cigarettes and other areas: The non-cigarette side of the tobacco industry largely dodged a bullet.
Pennsylvania legislators spare smokeless tobacco in budget agreement continues at pennlive.com..
