Reuters seems to be counting Pittman-Robertson dollars as sin taxes. PR has been around for quite some time, and as far as I know has been 11% pretty much its whole existence. The dollars used for fish and wildlife management, as well as public ranges. Even so, it might be unconstitutional. The Heller ruling probably puts upper limits on how much governments can consider firearms and ammunition to be a “sin” and tax it accordingly.
4 thoughts on “Sin Tax?”
Comments are closed.
These are only “sin taxes” if you regard hunting or self-defense as sins–and even Quakers don’t regard hunting as a sin!
Although now that I think about it, a lot of the colonial blue laws that prohibited various entertainments on Sunday included hunting and fishing as activities that you were required to abstain from, in order to keep the Sabbath holy.
I would think the Pittman-Robertson tax would be constitutional as long as 100% of funds are being allocated to conservation or shooting related purpose. Then again, I’m not a constitutional lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.
One wonders where the NFA taxes would fall in this. They go into the general fund, but are (according to ATF) earmarked for HUD.