State Cigarette and Sales Taxes
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| A Federal tax of $10.10 per carton is paid at the point of manufacturing. This tax is paid on all cigarettes sold in the United States, including those sold from Native American reservations, which are almost all exempt from state taxes. The sales tax column includes only state sales tax. Several states, such as California and New York, also have local sales taxes. |
| Primary Source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Date of Report: January 1, 2008. (Note: DCSG updates table using data from other sources such as media reports, state statutes, etc.) |
| 25 Higher-Tax States | 26 Lower-Tax States | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Note*: New York City, itself, imposes an additional $15.00 per carton tax. Thus, NYC residents pay a total of $42.50 excise tax per carton of cigarettes. Other states have provisions for their cities and/or counties to levy additional taxes on cigarettes...and many do. Therefore, the overall tax a consumer pays for smokes depends not only on the state in which they live, but can be significantly more if they live (and buy their cigarettes) in one of these "additional tax" cities or counties. Note**: Hawaii's new tax rate of $20.00 per carton will become effective on September 30, 2008. |
| Some points of interest: Governments (Federal, State, and Local) make, on average, 7 times more money on cigarettes than the companies who make the cigarettes! After all taxes are factored in, both for consumers and manufacturers, there is a bigger percentage of taxes on cigarettes (75%) than on: liquor (72%), gasoline (54%), telephones (50%), guns (46%), automobiles (45%), beer (43%), hotel rooms (43%), flying (40%), pizza (38%), bread (31%), soda pop (35%), restaurant meals (27.6%), and electricity (25.7%). |
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