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Head of finance panel takes hard line on collection of cigarette tax
Jump to full article: Buffalo (NY) News, 2010-09-08
Author: Phil Fairbanks News Staff Reporter
Intro: An influential downstate senator says that the Seneca Nation waves its flag of sovereignty only when it is convenient and insists that New York State will not back down from taxing Indian cigarettes.
State Sen. Carl Kruger, D-Brooklyn, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, contends that the lawsuits filed by Native American retailers have no basis in law and are needlessly adding to New York's already troubling budget deficit.
Kruger, a long-standing champion of the state's efforts to collect taxes from Indian retailers for their sales of cigarettes to non-Indians, added his voice to the debate as part of a letter to U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara, one of the judges overseeing the tax case.
"No matter how they twist the facts, the facts are the facts," Kruger said of the Senecas and other upstate tribes during an interview with The Buffalo News.
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