Smoking is useful for the government

February 20, 2010

It seems that the filling of the state budget with all the possible
means has brought the government to fiery. In the recent period almost
all the initiatives of the government have this exact purpose – levy
as much money as possible from all the sectors. Indeed, everything is
done with beautiful formulations and as it is characteristic to the
government with pathos. The government has sent a package to the NA,
the purpose of which is the increase of taxes levied from imported and
locally produced cigarettes. The government is substantiating this
initiative with the necessity of `justified taxing’ and indeed with
the honest intentions of fight against smoking. In the substantiation
of the government presented by the government it reads that as a
result of these changes it is expected to increase the tax inflows
with annually 3 billion AMD. The cigarette as known is one of the
types of goods, the demand of which almost doesn’t decrease due to the
raise of price. It means that as a result of changes, the smokers
instead of quitting will only have to pay more. Both the government
and cigarette importing companies quite well realize this. They will
pay the added taxes not at the expense of their profits but through
the consumers. And the claims on the fight against smoking are only
lyrical phrases. The government needs that the people continue
smoking. It is desirable that they smoke more so that the government
fills more money in the budget. So it is not excluded that some day
the government may decide that gasoline is dangerous for the
environment and they will decide to increase the taxes. The
monopolists will only be happier about that.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress