So the other day, I read about the New York legislature's move toward a cigar tax cap. Now, if you keep up with cigar politics at all, you would know that New York's cigar tax is not only egregious, it is irresponsible on the part of the legislature. At 75%, the tax helps to more than double the price of a cigar, once other taxes and profits and factored in. But finally, someone in that state has stood up and basically said "Enough is enough," and that person deserves to be recognized as a Freedom Fighter for cigar rights.
Anyways, once I read about this, I began to think about my own state's OTP tax, and although it may not be too high right now (Ohio has a 17% OTP tax), the risk of it rising is not something that I wanted to sit and wait around for. So I contacted some people in Columbus to see if we could talk about introducing our own cigar tax cap legislation for the State of Ohio, and the behind-the-scenes response has been incredible to say the least. People really understand where I am coming from and they really want to help to save small retailers in Ohio.
Obviously it is extremely early in the game to get too excited about the potential outcome of these preliminary discussions. But with a little effort, the correct timing of the political landscape of the state, and some luck as well, I think this can be something that we pull off in Ohio, and something that other states begin to copy and pull off themselves! After all, it wasn't until I read about New York's early successes (And that fight is far from over) that I thought to maybe try and do something like that in my own state. This is how these things get done, all it takes is a sound argument and persistence and you can convince anybody to do anything!
Mike
No comments:
Post a Comment