57% of New York’s cigarettes are smuggled in to avoid high taxes: report

With high cigarette taxes in New York comes a high rate of smuggling.

Washington, D.C.’s nonpartisan tax policy research organization The Tax Foundation released a new report Wednesday that finds: 56.9 percent of cigarettes that make it into New York are due to black market efforts to avoid the taxation.

The Empire State’s cigarette tax is the highest in the nation at $4.35 per pack, and that does not count a local New York City cigarette tax of $1.50 per pack, the organization found.

The Tax Foundation found that some of the preferred methods for smuggling cigarettes into the state successfully include using counterfeit state tax stamps or counterfeit versions of legitimate brands and hijacking trucks.

Other states that rival New York’s include: Arizona (51.5 percent), New Mexico (48.1 percent) and Washington (48 percent).