Indian tribes are required to tax only nontribal members for tobacco sales.
For convenience’s sake, the state of Oklahoma allows the tribes to make payments to the state in lieu of taxes for cigarettes sold on Indian land to non-Indians.
Under these agreements, or compacts, the tribes agree to pay the state a percentage of the wholesale tax on a pack of free cigarettes
on sales to non-Indian customers.
When the state raised the taxes on tobacco, new compacts were drawn up for tribes whose compacts were set to expire.
The new compacts created compact rates ranging from 86 cents to 6 cents per pack. Language in the tax increase also changed the way the tax was levied, moving it from part sales tax at the retail level, part excise tax at the wholesale level to an entirely excise tax, thus reducing the price advantage that tribal smoke shops held over nontribal retailers.
Of the three large Tulsa-area tribes, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation is the only one that does not have a tobacco compact, though most Creek-licensed stores in the Tulsa area have been selling the cigarettes bearing 6-cent tax stamps reserved for compacted tribes.
Of 34 Oklahoma tribes, five have no tobacco compact, 17 have new compacts and 15 are operating under unexpired old compacts.



