Excise

An excise or excise tax (sometimes called a special excise duty) is an inland tax on the sale, or production for sale, of specific goods or a tax on a good produced for sale, or sold, within a country or licenses for specific activities. Excises are distinguished from customs duties, which are taxes on importation. Excises are inland taxes, whereas customs duties are border taxes.

An excise is considered an indirect tax, meaning that the producer or seller who pays the tax to the government is expected to try to recover or shift the tax by raising the price paid by the buyer. Excises are typically imposed in addition to another indirect tax such as a sales tax or value added tax (VAT). In common terminology (but not necessarily in law), an excise is distinguished from a sales tax or VAT in three ways:

Excise tax in the United States

Excise tax in the United States is an indirect tax on listed items. Excise taxes can be and are made by federal, state and local governments and are not uniform throughout the United States. Excise taxes are collected by the producer or retailer and not paid directly by the consumer, and as such often remain "hidden" in the price of a product or service, rather than being listed separately. This is thought to explain their appeal to many politicians.

Constitutional law

The U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1789, gave the federal government authority to tax, stating that Congress has the power to

Tariffs between states are prohibited by the U.S. Constitution and all domestically made products can be imported or shipped to another state tax free. In the U.S. constitutional law sense, an excise tax is usually an event tax (as opposed to a state of being tax). A recent exception to this "state of being" principle is the "minimum essential coverage" tax under Internal Revenue Code section 5000A as enacted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111–148), whereby a tax penalty is imposed as an indirect tax on the condition of not having health insurance coverage as reasoned by Chief Justice Roberts "it is triggered by specific circumstances."