Montana cigarette tax
State tobacco excise · tax year 2026 · federal tax excluded
Per pack
$1.70
state tax only
Per carton
$17
A pack a day, a year
$621
Rate rank
29
1 is the highest
What Montana charges on tobacco
- Count it by the year rather than the pack and Montana's tobacco tax looks different. One pack carries $1.70. Three hundred and sixty-five of them carry $621. A carton at a time it is $17, and the state ranks 29 nationally.
- Tobacco tax is comparatively low in Montana, running $0.30 under the middle state's rate per pack — $621 across a year of daily smoking. It is one of the few taxes where being the cheap state visibly changes who shops where.
- One thing Montana does not do is add general sales tax on top. There is no state sales tax here at all, so the $1.70 of tobacco tax is the whole of what the state charges on a pack. In most of the country a second tax lands on the shelf price afterwards, and that shelf price already contains the tobacco tax — so those states charge tax on tax. Montana does not. It means an excise comparison against another state overstates the gap, because the other state has a layer this one lacks.
- Annualized, Montana's per-pack excise of $1.70 becomes $621 at a pack a day, or $17 per carton, against a national rate rank of 29. ⚠️ Federal excise sits on top and is excluded. Annualization matters analytically because per-pack framing systematically understates the cumulative burden of a specific tax on a daily-consumption good.
- With a pack rate $0.30 beneath the national median, Montana is positioned as a low-rate jurisdiction. ⚠️ Because tobacco excise is levied at the point of sale rather than of consumption, a low-rate state adjacent to high-rate ones collects on purchases made by non-residents, and its per-capita receipts consequently overstate in-state consumption.
- Montana levies no general state sales tax, so tobacco carries the specific excise of $1.70 alone rather than the excise-plus-ad-valorem stack applied in most states. ⚠️ Elsewhere the sales tax base includes the embedded excise, so the two levies compound; here they cannot. That makes a like-for-like comparison of headline excise rates misleading in this direction — Montana's effective burden on a pack is lower than its rank alone implies, and the size of the difference depends on retail price, which this project does not model.
Your year of fuel tax
A $75,000 salary
| State fuel taxper gallon | 33¢ |
|---|---|
| Fuel tax, year | $206 |
| Tobacco taxper pack | $2 |
| You must earn | $318 |
| Hours of work | 8.8 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 | $12 |
| a month | 30 | $51 |
| a year | 365 | $621 |
| five years | 1,825 | $3,103 |
What this page cannot tell you
- These are tax figures only. What a pack actually costs in Montana 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 Montana 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 Montana, 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 Montana 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 — 29 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.
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 29 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.