Big Tobacco companies are required to pay New York State $92 million even though the state failed to collect taxes on Indian reservation cigarette sales since 2003, according to Buffalo News.
A three-judge arbitration panel ruled September 11 that New York’s failure to impose excise taxes on Indian reservation cigarette sales does not exempt the country’s largest tobacco companies from their financial obligation under the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA). The tobacco companies, which claim they were put at a competitive disadvantage because the state did not tax Indian cigarette sales, will have to pay the $92 million they withheld as required by the agreement. In the landmark 1998 settlement, Philip Morris USA and other large tobacco companies (participating manufacturers—PMs) agreed to pay $246 billion to states, including New York, to settle lawsuits brought by the attorneys general of 46 states to recover billions of dollars in costs associated with treating smoking-related illnesses. The historic settlement has distributed more than $70 billion in payments to the 46 states. New York has received about copy1.5 billion in settlement proceeds since the 1998 agreement.
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