As New York Indian Nation leaders battle in courtrooms to preserve their tax-free cigarette market, tensions are rising on reservations, where the state’s renewed efforts to tax sales to non-Native customers is viewed as yet another attack on Native American rights. The $4.35 sales tax would force the nine New York tribes who are in the cigarette business to...
View full sizeA man positions himself along the Thruway as it bisects the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in Irving, N.Y., during a rally to protest the proposed New York state cigarette tax to non-Native American consumers.As New York Indian Nation leaders battle in courtrooms to preserve their tax-free cigarette market, tensions are rising on reservations, where the state’s renewed efforts to tax sales to non-Native customers is viewed as yet another attack on Native American rights. The $4.35 sales tax would force the nine New York tribes who are in the cigarette business to raise their prices and blunt their competitive edge over off-reservation sellers.
Many syracuse.com users are calling for the state to collect the taxes. But that's not the opinion of one user, mattydalekid, who had this to say:
"The constitution did say that we will honor all land agreements that the British signed with the Indians before the revolution and a man nor a nation is nothing without it's word. So time to back off and let them do what they want to do on their own land. The taxes are not the problem of the Indians. The law clearly states that a New York resident who buys something outside of New York is subject to our sales tax when they bring the item back into New York. We should not be messing with the Indians because our own citizens break the law."
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