Alaska cigarette tax
State tobacco excise · tax year 2026 · federal tax excluded
Per pack
$2
state tax only
Per carton
$20
A pack a day, a year
$730
Rate rank
23
1 is the highest
What Alaska charges on tobacco
- A pack costs $2 in Alaska state tax before anything else is counted. A carton carries $20. Buy a pack a day and the tax alone reaches $730 across a year. Alaska ranks 23 in the country on that rate.
- Alaska taxes tobacco lightly by national standards — $0 less per pack than the middle state, so a pack a day carries $730 a year rather than more. States on this side of the line tend to be the ones their neighbors' smokers drive to.
- Alaska is a special case. The state charges no sales tax of its own, so nothing is added on top of the $2 tobacco tax at the state level. Boroughs and towns here do levy their own sales tax though, and where they do it lands on the shelf price — which already has the tobacco tax inside it. So whether a pack carries a second layer depends entirely on which town you buy it in.
- Alaska levies $2 of state excise per twenty-cigarette pack, $20 per carton, and $730 annually at a pack a day — rate rank 23 nationally. ⚠️ Federal excise applies on top and is excluded here, being uniform across states. Tobacco excise is the most cross-border-sensitive tax in common use: the differential between neighboring states is large enough that measured smuggling and casual cross-border purchase track it closely.
- Alaska's pack excise sits $0 below the national median. ⚠️ Low-rate states are typically net exporters of tobacco in cross-border flows, collecting revenue on volume consumed elsewhere — which makes their receipts partly a function of neighboring states' rates rather than of in-state consumption alone.
- Alaska levies no state-level general sales tax, so the $2 specific excise is the entire state charge on a pack. ⚠️ Local jurisdictions do hold independent sales tax authority and exercise it unevenly, so a second ad valorem layer applies at some addresses and not others — and where it applies it falls on a price that already embeds the excise. ⛔ No dollar figure is given for that layer: it varies by borough and requires a retail price this project does not model.
Your year of fuel tax
A $75,000 salary
| State fuel taxper gallon | 8¢ |
|---|---|
| Fuel tax, year | $50 |
| Tobacco taxper pack | $2 |
| You must earn | $71 |
| Hours of work | 2 hr |
State excise only. Federal fuel tax and any local levy are not included.
What it comes to over time
State tobacco tax alone, at a pack a day. The cigarettes themselves are not included, and neither is federal tax or any local tobacco tax. A carton is 10 packs.
| Over | Packs | State tax |
|---|---|---|
| a week | 7 | $14 |
| a month | 30 | $60 |
| a year | 365 | $730 |
| five years | 1,825 | $3,650 |
What this page cannot tell you
- These are tax figures only. What a pack actually costs in Alaska depends on the shop, the brand and the sales tax on top, none of which is counted here.
- ⚠️ Federal tobacco tax is charged on top of every figure here and is the same in every state.
- Some cities and counties add their own tobacco tax as well. Those are not included, so the real figure at a particular address in Alaska can be higher.
- And this is cigarettes specifically. Cigars, loose tobacco and vaping products are taxed under different rules that are not covered here.
- Figures are state excise alone. Retail price, brand differentials and any general sales tax applied to the final price are excluded, and this project holds no price dataset — so nothing here should be read as the cost of a pack in Alaska, only as the state's charge on one.
- ⚠️ Federal excise applies in addition throughout and is excluded deliberately: it is uniform nationally, so its inclusion would raise every state's figure identically without changing any comparison.
- Local tobacco excise exists in a number of jurisdictions — including some of the largest cities — and is excluded from these figures, which cover the state levy only. Where a locality in Alaska imposes its own, the effective per-pack charge exceeds what this page reports.
- Scope is cigarettes in packs of twenty. Other tobacco products — cigars, roll-your-own, snuff — and electronic nicotine delivery systems are taxed under separate schedules, frequently ad valorem rather than specific, and are outside this dataset.
Questions people ask
Is the tax added when I pay, like it is on other things?
The excise arrives before the shop does — a per-pack charge, often stamped on the packet. What the register adds, if anything, is a separate sales tax.
How does this compare with other states?
Around the middle: 23 of 51. Nearby states are unlikely to differ dramatically at this position.
What does a lower tobacco tax here mean in practice?
Packs cost less here than in most states, and the state collects less per pack. Borders with higher-tax neighbors tend to send buyers this way rather than the other.
How is tobacco excise collected relative to the point of sale?
Tobacco excise is levied per pack upstream of retail, commonly evidenced by a tax stamp, and is therefore embedded in the shelf price. General sales tax, where applicable, is calculated on a base that already includes the excise, so the two compound rather than sit side by side.
Where does this state sit in the national distribution?
This state ranks 23 of 51, within the middle third. Cross-border substitution effects are weakest at this position because adjacent-state differentials are typically small relative to travel cost.
What follows from a below-median tobacco excise?
This state's per-pack levy is below the national median. Lower excise reduces both retail price and per-pack revenue, and states on the low side of a large interstate differential typically experience net inbound cross-border purchasing, which inflates their taxed volumes relative to resident consumption.