Taxes

New Mexico’s 50-cent tax cap for cigars will be going away this July.

Instead of getting a tax cap or lower tax rate for premium cigars, the Legislature made just one change to how cigars are taxed in Wyoming. Retailers can now wait to pay the taxes until after the products are sold.

The new bill was introduced with bipartisan support. Currently, Nevada’s tax rate is 30 percent of the wholesale price.

Last year, Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a very similar bill, but Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, has a new bill with different language.

A bill introduced this week would take the state’s tax rate on premium cigars from zero to 65.03 percent of the wholesale price. This would take New Hampshire from the cheapest place to buy cigars in the U.S. to the fourth-most expensive.

Now the question is whether this will mean the prices of Cuban cigars will increase around the world due to Habanos S.A.’s “global pricing standard” that was introduced in 2022. Last year, the Cuban cigar monopoly said it wanted to create uniform pricing around the world, with the price of a cigar in Hong Kong designated as the standard price.

If passed, the tax would benefit any cigar with an MSRP of more than $2.85.

All tobacco tax rates in Singapore are increasing by 15 percent. The new tax rate for cigars will be SGD 42.7 per gram.

Illinois legislators will once again debate giving cigar smokers some tax relief.

The current text calls for cutting the tax on premium cigars from 20 percent to 10 percent. For most cigar smokers, this is probably a step backwards compared to the legislation that passed the Wyoming Senate last month.

Near-identical legislation was introduced in 2020 and did not pass.