About Taxes and Tobacco

Sometimes it seems there are government spies hiding behind every bush looking for a new way to get tax money out of the unsuspecting citizens. There are hundreds of adages used to describe the various strategies of those eager collectors. A typical reference is comparing IRS employees to “vultures … circling overhead waiting for a hapless worker to stumble and fall on the burning sands of tax land.”

Last month there was an example of this kind of action down in Billings. Seems a man named Casey Brock has been building a unique business to help smokers get lower cost fixes. He opened a shop where customers come in and roll their own cigarettes on his handy machines. Start with some special papers, bulk tobacco, and presto, “smokes for a fraction of the cost of tailor-mades from stores.”

Alas! After eight months of creating a fast growing clientele, the State of Montana took him to court. A judge ruled he had to get a manufacturer’s  license and pay the subsequent taxes. Right now the state has a temporary injunction which prohibits customers from using those machines. Brock says his customers make their own product.

That story reminds me of incidents from my past. In the late ‘60s when I was working with my brother at his Bell Camper plant south of Kalispell, weeds around the buildings became a big worry, so Ritchey bought a large riding mower to take care of that situation. Naturally, we didn’t mow every day and he took the mower up to his home one weekend to cut grass around his large yard. Who would have thought it? Within a few days an IRS agent demanded a breakdown on what percentage of the big mower’s use was for the plant and how much for his personal lawn. This question was eventually settled by a long inane IRS audit.

When we lived up at the Flathead Mine, a couple of my eighth-grade friends and I got a small cigarette rolling machine and we used it to sneak a few puffs out behind the woodshed every now and then. One day brother Ritchey caught us and requested membership in “the club.” He was two years younger than we were but we had to let him in.

Next fall I started batching in Kalispell to attend high school and I’d catch rides home Friday nights on an ore truck from Kila. It was after dark one Friday and as I approached our house on the trail from the road, there was Ritchey hiding in the bushes because he had to talk to me. Then he said, “George, Dad found our smoking cache in the garage attic and seeing as how you are older, I told him it was yours.”

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning columnist for Hungry Horse News. He lives in Kalispell.