[Just scare tactics, these internet dealers can just fold up and start a new site the next day.]

"City Seeks to Recoup Tax Money From Internet Cigarette Vendors
By DIANE CARDWELL


Seeking to recoup millions of dollars in uncollected tax revenues, the city filed suit yesterday against several companies that sell cigarettes over the Internet but, the suit alleges, do not properly report the sales to the authorities.

Lawyers for the city said they believed it was the first time a locality had taken such strong aim at Internet cigarette tax evasion. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that the suit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, was intended to punish companies that advertise tax-free cigarette sales through the Internet.

"We're not going to be the only ones," Mr. Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show on WABC. "Every state has a problem that nobody's paying sales tax on the purchases over the Internet."

The city's complaint accuses several operators of about a dozen cigarette retail Web sites of engaging in a huge tax evasion scheme by failing to file reports that alert state tax authorities to out-of-state cigarette purchases. Some of the sites falsely state that cigarettes bought over the Internet are tax-free, the suit charges, despite laws that require purchasers to pay excise and sales taxes on cigarettes bought for use in the state."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/18/nyregion/18CIGA.html

Another can o'worms...

Imagine what happens if RICO is used here...

Anyone here shop online? Anyone use eBay? Won't it be just grand when every package from any other state has to go through a "customs" procedure? I thought there was a Supreme Court ruling on interstate commerce that would squelch such an action.

Here we go trying to repeal fumdamental laws of economics again. Marijuana is illegal in California, as far as I know. Walk down Ocean Front Walk in Venice on a Saturday, and you wouldn't know it. So lets pass more laws we can't enforce.