State Senator Joe Griffo says that he and Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb have introduced legislation that would defer the collection of the increased sales tax on cigarettes until the state begins to collect the cigarette tax on tobacco sold on Native American reservations to non-tribe members.

Griffo said, “It’s unfair and until the administration moves forward on a uniform collection of the tax and increase should be deferred if not scrapped altogether.”

The tax increase, adopted as part of the 2010-2011 budget, was part of an overall agreement to resolve the issues of collection of cigarette sales taxes on product sold by Native Americans to non-tribal members, Griffo says.

Senator Griffo added, “It is patently unfair to impose new and higher taxes on small businesses, many of them family-owned convenience stores. Our economic recovery is dependent on the success of these very same enterprises.”