"The state years ago came up with the idea to tax cigarettes sold on Indian reservations. For a long time that idea was stymied by a very simple and inevitable question that had to be answered before implementing the plan: How?

You can’t tax Indians on their sovereign land, but not everyone buying cigarettes on a reservation is a member of a tribe. Figuring out how to tax some smokers and not others proved to be a difficult challenge.

So governors before Andrew M. Cuomo did the smart thing. Very little."

Get the Story:
Jeffrey Saviskie: Taxing questions about Indian cigarette sales (The Watertown Daily Times 5/16)

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