By Evan Grossman | From Watchdog.org
Their products — not their businesses — are supposed to go up in smoke.
But hundreds of Pennsylvania vape shops may be snuffed out like a cigarette butt because of new taxes imposed on their products. Lawmakers passed a crippling 40 percent tax on e-cigarette and vaping liquid inventories, retroactive to Oct. 1, which has small business operators fuming and on the verge of losing their livelihoods.
“Yeah, absolutely,” Ken Cala, a co-owner of The Local Vapor in Doylestown, told Watchdog when asked if the new tax puts his business in peril.
“We opened a second location (in nearby Ambler) only about eight months ago and it’s still barely on its feet,” he said. “We incurred some debt to get that up and running. Myself and the other owners are concerned that if this becomes too prohibitive for us, we could be stuck paying that debt out-of-pocket if the businesses go under.”
Other shop owners are already forecasting the end of their business because they won’t be able to afford to pay the new tax.
“I anticipate that virtually all specialty vapor businesses will eventually close as a direct result of this tax,” George Predmore, the co-owner of Mountain Vaporz in Tannersville, told the Pocono Record.
According to some estimates, 92 percent of Pennsylvania’s 300 vape shops could close as a result of the 40 percent wholesale tax and new federal regulations that require shop owners to pay for FDA approval for homemade vaping liquids. FDA application costs could top $100,000.
As many as 1,500 full-time jobs could be lost in Pennsylvania alone because of the new laws governing the shops.
“This is pretty much a catastrophe for us,” Michael Curry, owner of Life Smoke Vapors in York, told the York Dispatch.
