Sidebottom owns MWS Enterprises Inc., Amherst, N.Y., which operates a chain of 36 c-stores, mostly under the Yellow Goose and Arrow Mart names. His tobacco license fee will increase from $3,600 to $75,000, payable in September, the report said.
For MWS Enterprises, the fee went from $100 dollars [image-nocss] to $1,000 at 10 stores and from $100 to $2,500 at 26 stores, added a report by WGRZ-TV.
Now, the fee is now based on a store's total sales of all merchandise. It counts every gallon of gasoline, drink, snack and pack of cigarettes, the report said.
"We don't have a problem with increase administrative fees for the state if that's what it is, but this is just punitive, onerous, unconscionable," Sidebottom told WGRZ.
Sidebottom said he believes lawmakers did not even know what they were voting on. "This came out of the last few hours of the budget process, middle of the night. Somebody inserted it and next morning, of course, they voted on it," he told WIVB.
C-stores like the Yellow Goose with gas stations on the property have had a hard time competing with Native American gasoline and cigarette outlets that do not pay fees and taxes to the state, said the report. Sidebottom said, "It's extremely difficult to compete with the Native Americans, so there's a great possibility that with the next year or so we will shut down specific stores."
His 36 stores employ 300 people across 13 counties.
"If this goes through in the next year we're going to have to make some hard decisions--which stores we keep online and which stores we don't," said Sidebottom.
He said that he has written all of Western New York's lawmakers to ask for help.
Assemblyman Robin Schimminger (D) is co-sponsoring a bill to roll these fees back, said the report.
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