New Hampshire cigarette tax
State tobacco excise · tax year 2026 · federal tax excluded
Per pack
$1.78
state tax only
Per carton
$18
A pack a day, a year
$650
Rate rank
28
1 is the highest
What New Hampshire charges on tobacco
- New Hampshire takes $1.78 in tax from every pack. Over a carton that is $18, and over a year at a pack a day it is $650. The state's rate ranks 28 in the country. None of that includes the cigarettes themselves.
- New Hampshire taxes tobacco lightly by national standards — $0.22 less per pack than the middle state, so a pack a day carries $650 a year rather than more. States on this side of the line tend to be the ones their neighbors' smokers drive to.
- One thing New Hampshire does not do is add general sales tax on top. There is no state sales tax here at all, so the $1.78 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. New Hampshire does not. It means an excise comparison against another state overstates the gap, because the other state has a layer this one lacks.
- State tobacco excise in New Hampshire runs $1.78 per pack, $18 per carton and $650 annually at daily consumption, with a rate ranking 28 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.
- New Hampshire's pack excise sits $0.22 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.
- New Hampshire levies no general state sales tax, so tobacco carries the specific excise of $1.78 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 — New Hampshire'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 | 22.2¢ |
|---|---|
| Fuel tax, year | $139 |
| Tobacco taxper pack | $2 |
| You must earn | $197 |
| Hours of work | 5.5 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 | $53 |
| a year | 365 | $650 |
| five years | 1,825 | $3,249 |
What this page cannot tell you
- These are tax figures only. What a pack actually costs in New Hampshire 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 New Hampshire 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 New Hampshire, 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 New Hampshire 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: 28 of 51. Nearby states are unlikely to differ dramatically at this position.
What does a lower tobacco tax here mean in practice?
Cheaper packs than most of the country, and a state that raises less from them. It also makes New Hampshire a source rather than a victim of cross-border buying — the traffic runs toward the low-tax side of a border, not away from it.
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 28 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.