Title: New York City Sues RYO Shops
Description: New York City has sued Island Smokes, maintaining they must charge full city and state taxes for cigarettes rather than those for loose tobacco.
Page Content: NEW YORK ? The proliferation of roll your own cigarettes in New York City has hit a snag, as the city filed suit earlier this month against Island Smokes shops in Chinatown and on Staten Island, the New York Times reports.
�
The stores do not sell cigarette packages but instead sell loose tobacco and papers, allowing customers to use on-site machines to make their own cigarettes.
�
The practice is a ?legal gray area? for New York stores, the Times said, as the stores assess loose tobacco taxes rather than the much higher cigarette taxes.
�
But the city said that must change, characterizing the shops? services as effectively selling cigarettes, which must incur the full state and city tax of $5.85 per pack.
�
?By selling illegally low-priced cigarettes,? said the city?s lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, ?defendants not only interfere with the collection of city cigarette taxes, they also impair the city?s smoking cessation programs and impair individual efforts at smoking reduction, thereby imposing higher health care costs on the city and injuring public health.?
�
Jonathan Berhrins, an attorney representing the shops, said the stores were not obligated to charge cigarette taxes because they do not produce cigarettes for resale.
�
?We are selling the contents that produce the cigarette,? he said, ?and it?s up to the user to make them.?
�
The city maintains the argument is a semantic one.
�
?When you go to a salad bar, they sell you a salad, not a salad assembly process,? said Eric Proshansky, deputy chief of the corporation counsel?s affirmative litigation division. ?When customers walk out of these stores, they have finished cigarettes and they bought them in those stores. The stores also have signage that calls them a discount cigarettes shop.?
Content Subject: Marketing/Merchandising
Formatted Article Date: November 28, 2011
Няма коментари:
Публикуване на коментар