If it makes you feel better, Washington State still taxes pipe tobacco at 95%. Marijuana is 37%. Because, you know, we have to protect the public from the 2000-3000 pipe smokers who create havoc on the road each year, what with their piping and driving. Unbelievable carnage. 32 year old Volvos in the ditch, briar shards everywhere.
Some sites are so spooked (cough CI cough) that even if you have a business license, tobacco retailer license and tobacco distributor license (there's close to a grand in licenses there, and the latter is needed to avoid having to buy all of your product for your own shpo via middlemen) they still won't sell pipe tobacco into Washington. Cigars, thankfully, remain capped at a per stick rate, but that only lasts as long as the state looks to fix some budget hole with more low-hanging fruit. Washington recently, for example, started charging EV owners $75 a year extra on their vehicle renewal tabs, as its regressive system depends quite a bit on fuel taxes.
If there is a way for the gov't to F you, expect it. That also goes for the back reporting. I expect eventually to hear horror stories about collecting back taxes or attempts to do so, followed by litigation and bankruptcies. If you saw what retailers pay in taxes in Washington, you might faint. I know I did.
