Seattle store owner thankful for block on roll-your-own cigarettes tax

A Washington judge is blocking the collection of taxes on roll-your-own cigarettes. If the tax would have been collected, one store owner says she would have been driven out of business.

Roll-your-own stores were supposed to start collecting taxes on July 1. State officials are exploring whether to appeal the decision.

“We could not compete with the additional taxes and the additional specific tobacco that we would have had to use,” Renee Goodall, co-owner Tobacco Junction told 97.3 KIRO FM’s Ross & Burbank Show.

Goodall’s store, in Seattle’s Rainier Valley caters to toboacco consumers that roll their cigarettes.

Her customers aren’t doing something they couldn’t do at home if her store was put out of business, Good said.

State officials said Monday that Franklin County Superior Court Judge Bruce Spanner had issued an oral ruling against the state. Department of Revenue spokesman Mike Gowrylow said the judge considered the tax in violation of a voter-approved initiative requiring two-thirds of lawmakers to support tax increases.

The Legislature voted earlier this year to force roll-your-own cigarette stores to collect the state’s 15-cents-per-cigarette tax, arguing that they were simply closing a loophole. Dozens of roll-your-own cigarette stores have appeared recently in Washington, selling cigarettes at less than half the price offered by most retailers.