Oregon cigarette tax
State tobacco excise · tax year 2026 · federal tax excluded
Per pack
$3.33
state tax only
Per carton
$33
A pack a day, a year
$1,215
Rate rank
9
1 is the highest
What Oregon charges on tobacco
- Oregon takes $3.33 in tax from every pack. Over a carton that is $33, and over a year at a pack a day it is $1,215. The state's rate ranks 9 in the country. None of that includes the cigarettes themselves.
- Tobacco is taxed heavily in Oregon — $1.33 more per pack than the middle of the country, and $1,215 a year at a pack a day. The gap is charged per pack, so it multiplies fast for anyone buying daily.
- One thing Oregon does not do is add general sales tax on top. There is no state sales tax here at all, so the $3.33 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. Oregon 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 Oregon runs $3.33 per pack, $33 per carton and $1,215 annually at daily consumption, with a rate ranking 9 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.
- At $1.33 per pack above the national median, Oregon sits in the upper band of state tobacco excise. ⚠️ The elasticity literature is unusually consistent here: consumption responds to price, and a substantial part of the measured response in high-rate states is substitution toward untaxed supply rather than cessation, which is why enforcement cost is a standard component of these programs.
- Oregon levies no general state sales tax, so tobacco carries the specific excise of $3.33 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 — Oregon'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 | 46¢ |
|---|---|
| Fuel tax, year | $287 |
| Tobacco taxper pack | $3 |
| You must earn | $466 |
| Hours of work | 13 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 | $23 |
| a month | 30 | $100 |
| a year | 365 | $1,215 |
| five years | 1,825 | $6,077 |
What this page cannot tell you
- These are tax figures only. What a pack actually costs in Oregon 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 Oregon 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 Oregon, 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 Oregon 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.
Is this a high-tax state for this?
Among the higher ones, yes — 9 of 51. The spread between states on this levy is wide enough that crossing a border can change the cost noticeably, which is exactly why cross-border buying is a live problem for revenue departments.
Does a higher tax here change what people actually do?
It is meant to. A tobacco levy above the national middle is deliberately a deterrent as much as a revenue source, and the two goals pull against each other: the better it works, the less it raises. Cross-border and untaxed purchasing rise with the gap to neighboring states.
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 9 of 51, placing it in the upper third. Wide interstate dispersion in per-unit excise creates measurable cross-border purchasing effects, which several revenue departments model explicitly when forecasting receipts.
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.