A few months ago The Anti-Counterfeiting Blog reported about a new "roll your own cigarette" (RYO) trend where customers roll their own cigarettes in shops that provide the materials and equipment to do so.  

Just to refresh your memory, the City of New York has sued and won a case against RYO shops forcing the shops to close. Now lawmakers in the State of Michigan are having a similar issue with RYO but their resolution is quite different. The State of Michigan is trying to pass a measure that would require RYO cigarette shops to pay $2.00 in taxes for every pack that leaves a RYO shop.

There is a new trend springing up in New York City and other places in the USA, roll-your-own cigarette shops. The concept of the stores is that customers choose from a selection of loose tobacco and roll their cigarettes themselves using rolling machines provided by the store.  Everything was fine until New York City law enforcement noticed and filed a complaint against several stores claiming that by letting customers roll their own cigarettes the shops are committing tax evasion.

There has been a lot of talk in America about raising taxes on consumer goods lately. The presidential candidate Herman Cain has been touting his 999 plan which proposes to create a 9% federal sales tax on all new goods sold in the USA. Also, some states are looking for ways to increase revenue from liquor sales; some of these plans involve raising liquor taxes.

We at InkSure encourage governments to use efficient tax collection aids and procedures. One strategy we often encourage is the issuing of high tech machine readable tax stamps with covert anti-counterfeiting protection as a way to be sure governments collect the revenue owed to them. But sometimes things are not so easy.