State pursues cigarette tax evaders and nabs the poor and elderly

That's who they're aiming for, isn't it?

http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060606/POLITICS/606060397

June 6, 2006

Cigarette tax singes poor, old
State slaps 3,500 more smokers with bills for buying cartons online.

Sarah Ryley / The Detroit News

MOUNT CLEMENS -- When Marilyn Mostek, a senior living in a subsidized apartment, heard she could save $20 on a carton of cigarettes by ordering from an out-of-state Indian reservation, she thought she had found a clever way to save money.

Those savings went up in smoke on May 19 when she received a bill from the state of Michigan for $511 in unpaid cigarette taxes -- nearly half of her fixed monthly income. Her neighbor, Robert Stutsman, received a bill the same day for $744.

Mostek, 69, and Stutsman, 75, are among 11,000 Michigan residents who over the past year and a half have felt the pinch of a state crackdown on people who have avoided Michigan's cigarette tax by buying from out-of-state vendors online.

The bills, averaging $1,787, have hit the elderly and poor particularly hard.

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taxes a little to make up for it, and let them have their cheap cigs. Christ, poor old people don't get much pleasure in life, let them light up if it makes them feel better.

Redstone

I find that annoying.

Redstone

Redstone

As the bush assholes retire and move off to yachts on the costa del sol, the regular
folks (read: poor) will get stuck with the big bill. Then everything will be a fine,
a new tax to finance the war of the criminals who got away.

Redstone

.. been the plan since the beginning of time... tragically, sadly.

best regards to you and yours, redstone,
-s

should do without, but they love them.