Tax on Moist Snuff

For those of you who want to cut to the chase, go to the bottom of the post to see the highlights I caught before I left.  

At 3pm I looked in to see why there were so many people in Room 106 where the State Affairs meeting met at 8 am with maybe 10 people in the audience. People were at this meeting to hear about taxes on Moist Snuff. I didn't stay, but I do want readers to learn how to find these hearings themselves. You can listen to this session. Go to the gavel to gavel website.

Here's the specific page.

http://www.ktoo.org/gavel/stream.cfm 

You'll get this page:

 (If you want to see the right side, click on the picture to enlarge it or go to the link.)  Then on the left (I put a red box around the key links) you can get the day's scheduled teleconferenced sessions, you can get audio archive of the day's session, or you can get the legislature's calendar of meetings and which ones are being broadcast or shown online.  Play with these.

If you've read this far, you probaby consider yourself an active citizen.  Be a little more active and try out this page and those links so you can look up any day's schedule and identify sessions you might want to listen to.

To hear this one, I would click on today's audio files (after the meeting) and scroll down to the Health and Social Services Standing Subcommittee.(That particular session isn't up yet.is working now.)


Here's for that committee from the schedule on the Legislature's website.
The schedule changes daily so you won't get this meeting if you try it after today. 

(H)HEALTH & SOCIAL SERVICES		STANDING COMMITTEE *
Feb 23 Tuesday 3:00 PM		CAPITOL 106
=+	HB 188	TAX ON MOIST SNUFF	TELECONFERENCED
*+	HB 309	DENTAL CARE INSURANCE	TELECONFERENCED
*+	HB 265	MEDICAID COVERAGE FOR DENTURES	TELECONFERENCED
+		Bills Previously Heard/Scheduled	TELECONFERENCED

Here's a little of the definition of tobacco from the bill.  (Click on the link above to see it.  I know when you click there you still have to click again on FULL TEXT button.)

(4) "tobacco product" means
16 (A) a cigar;
17 (B) a cheroot;
18 (C) a stogie;
19 (D) a perique;
20 (E) snuff tobacco, including moist snuff tobacco, and snuff
21 flour;
22 (F) smoking tobacco, including granulated, plug-cut, crimp-cut,
23 ready-rubbed, and any form of tobacco suitable for smoking in a pipe or
24 cigarette;
25 (G) chewing tobacco, including cavendish, twist, plug, scrap,
26 and tobacco suitable for chewing; or
27 (H) an article or product made of tobacco or a tobacco
28 substitute, but not including a cigarette as defined in AS 43.50.170;
29 * Sec. 5. AS 43.50.390 is amended by adding a new paragraph to read:
30 (6) "moist snuff tobacco" means any finely cut, ground, or powdered

31 tobacco that is not intended to be

01 (A) smoked; or

02 (B) placed in the nasal cavity. 

About the tax proposals. Before I left a staffer said:

1.  Spitless moist tobacco would go from 75% ad valorem to 100%
2.  Other tobacco products in a tin would be taxed $1.18 per ounce which would raise the prices of the cheaper products significantly and that that they know kids are very price sensitive.
3.  Cigars will have to be sold in packages of 5.
4.  25% of the ad valorem tax would go to the Tobacco Education and Cessation Fund
5.  This corrects a loop-hole in tobacco centered taxes because over-the-counter products hadn't had a tax before.