Before you pour one out for your homies, read this. Yesterday, Governor Eliot Spitzer proposed a new budget aimed at reducing New York State’s 4.4 billion dollar deficit. Among cuts to health care and education aid, the budget would add or increase taxes on some of our corner store favorites, namely malt liquor, which would be taxed at $2.54 per gallon rather than 11 cents. That’s a 2,209% increase! The price of forties will rise by as much as 80 cents! Edward Forty Hands is going to cost more than 5 whole dollars!
The proposed tax also means higher prices for malt liquor energy drinks like Sparks. One Sparks enthusiast told us it was probably “healthier in the long run. I imagine some will turn to hard drugs more frequently. PCP perhaps.”
Asked whether he would buy less malt liquor, a Hells Kitchen man told the Times, “Nah. You got to do what you got to do. It’s like gas. You drive the same mileage for $2 a gallon or $3.50 a gallon.”
The new budget also includes increased taxes for “low-end cigars” like Swisher Sweets and taxes for illegal drugs, including $3.50 per gram of marijuana and $200 a gram for cocaine. City Room took a closer look at the ‘cocaine tax’ and found the fine print spelling out how drug dealers can go about paying taxes on their supply.
The tax is paid by the dealer, in advance of his or her receipt of the marihuana or controlled substance, through the purchase of tax stamps from the Department of Taxation and Finance (“Department”). Upon receipt of the product, the dealer must affix enough stamps to the packages of marihuana or the controlled substance in order to show the tax has been fully paid.
Odds of drug dealers paying taxes: low. very low.
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1 comment:
they have the drug tax in iowa too. it's just so that prosecutors have an additional charge. in addition to possession with attempt to distribute they can charge you with the separate crime of not having a tax stamp. it's bullshit.
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