Lobby: Pataki Shouldn't Delay Indian Cigarette Tax

NEW YORK -- New York Gov. George Pataki wants to delay by one year a law requiring Indian stores to collect cigarette and fuel taxes, until after he has left office, a lobbyist for competing stores said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

The state Tax Department, under a law enacted last year, must begin requiring Indian reservation stores to start collecting the taxes on sales to non-Indians on March 1, said James Calvin, president of the New York Association of Convenience Stores, according to a copy of his legislative testimony.

But the Republican governor, now in the last year of his third four-year term, in his budget recommended delaying the start of these tax collections until March 1, 2007 – “after he has left office,'' Calvin said.

Calvin estimated that the current loophole was costing the state and the convenience stores, which have to compete with the lower-priced cigarettes and fuel the reservation stores can offer, huge amounts of money.

“It's a full-scale tax evasion epidemic that costs licensed retailers $1 billion or more in gross sales each year, and costs our state at least $900 million a year in lost tax revenue, not to mention what local governments lose, or the additional loss of motor fuel taxes.''

-- NYSSCPA.org News Staff

Posted on 2/16/06