Have you ever stopped to consider what life must be like for cigar store owners? They face all the same challenges that any small business faces every day of the year; keeping customers happy, paying taxes on time, paying the rent, combating theft and break-ins, keeping advertising fresh and focused in the right places, managing staff and trying to maintain some sort of home life that keeps the wife and kids happy - and that’s just for starters.

For the cigar store owner there’s the challenge of all those extra taxes that they have to pay. In some places there are State and Federal fees and taxes they have to pay just because they sell tobacco products. In New York for example every shop that sells tobacco products has to pay a $100 fee each year just for the privilege of being allowed to sell tobacco.

The State now wants to increase that fee and it could lead to some tobacco retailers paying as much as $5,000 a year. Even the State estimates that a fee hike in that range would put about 40 per cent of the States licensed tobacconists out of business and drastically reduce the sales many of the remaining tobacconists might make.

What hurts even more for many cigar shop owners in New York is that not every retail outlet in the state has to pay that fee. While New York governors have tried on many occasions they have been unable to pass a law that required Native American reservation stores to pay any State mandated fee.

Of course some may suggest that’s just competition - the very foundation of business here in the United States - but competition that’s so obviously weighted against some businesses is not competition at all and fortunately, for now, the New York State Supreme Court has recognized that fact and applied a temporary stay that prevents the State from introducing those new fees.