Colorado cigarette tax
State tobacco excise · tax year 2026 · federal tax excluded
Per pack
$2.24
state tax only
Per carton
$22
A pack a day, a year
$818
Rate rank
19
1 is the highest
What Colorado charges on tobacco
- Colorado takes $2.24 in tax from every pack. Over a carton that is $22, and over a year at a pack a day it is $818. The state's rate ranks 19 in the country. None of that includes the cigarettes themselves.
- Colorado is on the higher side nationally. Its pack tax runs $0.24 above the middle state's, which is what turns a daily habit into $818 of state tax a year. That gap is the reason cross-border buying is so common along the state lines here.
- Colorado charges sales tax on cigarettes too, at about 2.9%, on top of the tobacco tax already built into the price. It is one of the few things you buy where one tax is charged on a price that includes another.
- State tobacco excise in Colorado runs $2.24 per pack, $22 per carton and $818 annually at daily consumption, with a rate ranking 19 nationally. ⚠️ Federal excise excluded. Tobacco taxes are among the few levies explicitly intended to reduce the activity taxed, so the revenue and the policy goal work against each other by design — a tension that shows up whenever a state budgets against a declining base.
- Colorado's pack excise exceeds the national median by $0.24. ⚠️ Differentials of this size drive measurable cross-border and illicit trade: tobacco is compact, high-value per unit and easily transported, so consumption in a high-rate state is routinely supplied from a lower-rate neighbor. Revenue projections that assume a fixed base therefore tend to overstate the yield of an increase.
- Beyond the specific excise, Colorado subjects tobacco to its general sales tax of about 2.9% at the point of sale. ⚠️ The excise is levied upstream and embedded in the shelf price, so the sales tax base includes it — the compounding is a structural feature of specific-plus-ad-valorem stacking rather than an anomaly. ⛔ The resulting dollar figure requires a retail price and is therefore not computed.
Your year of fuel tax
A $75,000 salary
| State fuel taxper gallon | 22¢ |
|---|---|
| Fuel tax, year | $137 |
| Tobacco taxper pack | $2 |
| You must earn | $208 |
| Hours of work | 5.8 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 | $16 |
| a month | 30 | $67 |
| a year | 365 | $818 |
| five years | 1,825 | $4,088 |
What this page cannot tell you
- These are tax figures only. What a pack actually costs in Colorado 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 Colorado 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 Colorado, 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 Colorado 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?
No. It is charged per pack before the shop ever receives it, usually through a stamp on the packet, so the shelf price already includes it. Sales tax may still be added on top at the register, which means the same purchase can carry two different taxes collected two different ways.
How does this compare with other states?
In the middle of the pack — 19 of 51. That is a more common position than either extreme, and it means neighbors are likely to be charging something similar rather than very different.
Does a higher tax here change what people actually do?
That is the intention. Above-median tobacco tax is designed to discourage as much as to collect — and the more it discourages, the less it collects. Buying across a state line rises with the differential.
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 19 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 behavioural effects follow an above-median tobacco excise?
This state's per-pack levy exceeds the national median. Tobacco excise serves both revenue and public-health objectives, which are in tension: consumption elasticity means a successful deterrent narrows its own base. Interstate differentials also drive cross-border and untaxed acquisition, which revenue forecasts adjust for.