2 Cents: Cigarette Tax

Lawmakers are battling it out again over a proposed cigarette tax increase for South Carolina.

It seems the argument isn’t over the obvious question of whether or not we should raise the tax on cigarettes. Most agree we should. so then why does SC still have the Lowest cigarette tax in the nation? The national average is over a dollar per pack. An increase of 50 cents would keep us well under the average and raise over 150 million dollars.
well… one reason is that we just can’t seem to agree on what to do with the money generated from the tax.
some want to see the money filtered into the states Medicaid program because for every dollar we put in the federal government will match it.
some want all of the money to fund programs that foster smoking prevention in children
and others would like to see at least a portion of the revenue spent on assisting with healthcare cost for small businesses.

The Governor wants to use the money to offset lower income taxes. No net gain just a tax swap. We have seen how well tax swaps work with our education system.
What to do with 150 million dollars would be a nice problem to have. There are a lot of worthy suggestions for allocating the money but the problem is no one can seem to agree on a compromise! and because of that, South Carolina is just leaving money on the table.
I know many of you may be against a cigarette tax. some are against raising any taxes, especially during a recession. but my response to that is that you have a choice. you can chose not to buy cigarettes if you don’t want to. The bottom line is that our state needs funding and I would much rather see it generated from a “Luxury Tax” meaning something that we can do without if we had to. than to see higher sales and property taxes.
I’m Rick lipps and that’s my two cents.