Why are cigarettes so very expensive in New York City? There probably isn’t a single NYC-dwelling smoker who doesn’t buy the maximum allowance of cigarettes to bring back every time they travel.
Not only does New York State impose a tax of $4.35 on a pack of 20, the most of any U.S. state, once you add the local New York City tax of $1.60, you have the most expensive pack of cigarettes in all of the United States.
According to The Awl’s annual cigarette price check, where they just call up a bunch of delis in each state and ask how much a pack of cigarettes costs, a pack of 20 cigarettes cost more than $14 in New York.
In Kentucky, where the cigarette tax is just 60 cents, a pack costs $4.96, about a third of its cost in New York.
Here’s a map of states color-coded by how much they tax a pack of cigarettes, based on data released by the U.S. Federation of Tax Administrators earlier this year. Click on any state to see how much a pack costs according to The Awl’s price check, and how much of that price is state taxes:
The Price Of Cigarettes: How Much Does A Pack Cost In Each US State? [MAP]
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