From: Bloomberg/BNA
Cigarette trafficking – transporting cigarettes from one jurisdiction to another without paying applicable excise taxes—keeps popping up across the country like a non-stop Whac-A-Mole game. But where is the seemingly endless supply of game tokens coming from?
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However, both New York State and New York City have identified Native American tribal shops’ participation in cigarette smuggling as a continual problem. The jurisdictions filed a lawsuit in February against UPS for shipping untaxed cigarettes across the state. The complaint cites numerous instances of tribal-owned shops refusing to collect applicable taxes on their tobacco sales to non-Native Americans, and claims that the untaxed cigarettes UPS shipped came from reservation stores.
