Business, Government Legal News from throughout WVSenate bill looks for taxes from ‘roll your own’ shops

It's not often that Sen. Dan Foster, D-Kanawha, a physician, works with the tobacco industry for legislation. But a bill he's sponsoring that was introduced Feb. 6 is a little different.

"Well this bill is actually promoted by the tobacco industry, those who make normal cigarettes, because they are seeing that these folks are circumventing the process that they are having to go through themselves, so this is a little different," Foster said following the bill's introduction.

West Virginia law currently taxes cigarettes at 55 cents per pack. Stores that sell loose tobacco and single cigarettes are able to avoid the tax, and Senate Bill 514 looks to close what Foster called a loophole.

"It's a significant amount, 10's of millions of dollars that are being avoided through these businesses related to the sale of cigarettes," Foster said.

The bill does not set what the tax per cigarette should be, but defines anyone who has a "roll your own" cigarette machine at a retail business as a manufacturer of cigarettes, and those cigarettes are sold to consumers, which would include them as requiring payment of excise tax on those cigarettes.

Foster said the tax raises revenue for the state, which may be used for public health.

"I'm certainly a proponent of trying to decrease the prevalence of smoking, and the two most important policy measures to do that are one, to increase the price, and usually the tax is the best way to do that," he said." And the second is dealing with clean indoor air ordinances."

The bill was sent to the Senate health and human resources committee and is scheduled to go to the Senate finance committee next.