Holiday Cheer Means Reasonably Priced, Smuggled Booze: New at Reason

If government officials didn’t want us to smuggle goods, they’d lower taxes to make the business less profitable.

J.D. Tuccille writes:

Keeping the old punch bowl filled can get spendy at this time of year, so you can’t blame Juncheng Chen for making an epic party run to try to keep costs down. Unfortunately, officials in his home state of New York don’t like it when their captive subjects drive across the border to stock up in jurisdictions where the booze prices are cheaper. They arrested him earlier this month and issued a press releaseabout law enforcement’s great blow against frugal scofflawry.

“Juncheng Chen, 45, of 136-18 64th Road, Flushing, Queens, was arrested by investigators with the Tax Department’s Criminal Investigations Division after his vehicle was stopped by New York State Police in Rye, NY. The vehicle was packed with 757 liters of liquor, which Chen allegedly purchased at five different liquor outlets in New Hampshire.”

“Alcohol-related tax evasion, as this case clearly shows, is on our radar,” tutted Acting Commissioner Nonie Manion of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. Officials estimated they lost out on about $1,288 in liquor taxes because of Chen’s shopping trip—money, that is, that the man had planned on saving himself, his friends, and his customers by making purchases in a jurisdiction where the government was less sticky-fingered.

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