* I am surprised to learn that non-residents are still allowed to purchase untaxed cigarettes on Indian reservations (“Taxing Indian Butts,” Michael Bloomberg & Peter King, PostOpinion, Aug. 4).
There is an easy, though probably unpopular, solution.
Since the basis of the Indians’ claims for not collecting and remitting taxes is that the reservation is “sovereign territory” and therefore not subject to our laws, let’s treat it as such.
Require our citizens who enter the reservations to have passports, and Indians who come into the “sovereign” United States to present passports.
Customs officers could collect the duty on untaxed cigarettes and forward it to the states.
John Ost
Manhattan
* Rep. Peter King and Mayor Bloomberg have overlooked the most obvious alternative – taxing tobacco products at a fair and reasonable level.
Such a policy would, in one stroke, eliminate the incentive for smuggling, remove most of the competitive advantage enjoyed by merchants on Indian reservations and make it less likely that consumers would seek to avoid paying the tax.
The result would be a major increase in revenue.
Of course, to achieve this, King and Bloomberg would have to abandon their profoundly un-American desire to penalize a quarter of their constituents for making a personal choice with which they don’t agree.
Michael Tepedino
Deer Park
* What kind of funny cigarettes are King and Bloomberg smoking?
Tax revenue, amounting to $800 million, from forcing Indian reservations to pay or collect the onerous and ruinous cigarette tax, is a pipe dream.
New York smokers can take their business away from in-state reservations. They can go to New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, where cigarettes are much cheaper.
Or, smokers can car- pool it to Delaware or Virginia, where cigarettes are really cheap.
Cigarette bootleggers will multiply like rabbits. Are these politicians really that delusional?
The American colonists went to war with Britain because of the onerous tea tax.
Jerry Drandoff
Brooklyn
* Being an ex-smoker of 45 years, we need to use all the weapons available to stop present smokers and prevent future smokers from going through what I do.
We need to push our government to pursue the fight against tobacco, and one of the ways is the cost. For me, that was what helped me stop.
Think of all that money that is wasted on tobacco that could be used for more productive use.
Another idea is to get insurance companies to help pay for the smoke-cessation aids, such as the patch. Drug companies charge more for those products than what cigarettes cost.
Health plans would rather pay for cancer treatment than aids to prevent cancer.
Basil Elkowich
Selden
* Bloomberg’s self-serving logic behind his reasons that the Indian reservations should be forced to collect cigarette taxes is both flawed and perverse.
He sheds tears for small businesses that lose customers to the reservations, yet he is largely responsible for putting them in that position by, in part, imposing his Draconian tax.
The same applies to the contention that tobacco smugglers funnel profits from reservation sales to terrorists and are “threatening national security.”
Worse yet, Bloomberg would have you believe that cutting the reservations out of the picture would alleviate that problem.
On the contrary, that would lead individuals, who were buying for their personal consumption, to turn to the buttleggers.
Once again smokers are no more than a piggybank to be raided to cover all sorts of fiscal woes, this time the MTA’s.
Audrey Silk
Founder
NYC Citizens Lobbying
Against Smoker
Harassment
Brooklyn