In this April 23, 2014 file photo, a man smokes an electronic cigarette in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

Topeka ? A group that represents electronic cigarette retailers is trying to stop the Kansas Department of Revenue from enforcing a new tax on those items that lawmakers passed in 2015.

During a legislative committee meeting Tuesday, a lobbyist for the Kansas Vapers Association, a group made up mainly of e-cigarette retailers in Kansas, argued that because the bill imposing the new tax was drafted poorly, it is unclear what the Legislature’s original intent was and that lawmakers should revisit the issue before allowing the Kansas Department of Revenue to enforce it.

“You never had a hearing, you didn’t follow your own rules, it was plugged into the (conference committee) bill at the end of the session, and that’s why you need to look at this before these rules become effective in March,” lobbyist Tuck Duncan told the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules and Regulations.

That panel is charged with reviewing new rules and regulations before they are finally adopted so that lawmakers have a chance to weigh in and, if they believe it’s needed, pass new legislation that might change the regulations or the way they’re enforced.

In the midst of a budget crisis in 2015, lawmakers passed a tax bill that included several provisions, the most controversial of which was an increase in the statewide sales tax.

But another provision imposed a new tax on electronic cigarettes, also known as vaping fluid, of 20 cents per milliliter of “consumable material.” That provision, coupled with a 50-cent per pack increase in cigarette taxes, was expected to generate $38-$40 million a year.

Duncan said the e-cigarette provision was added to the tax bill in a conference committee, even though it had never been proposed as part of any tax bill the Legislature had considered that year, had never been the subject of any committee hearings or public comment, and had never been voted on by either chamber of the Legislature.

He said the Legislature’s own rules do not allow a completely new item to be added into a conference committee bill, but he also conceded that there is no law prohibiting the Legislature from violating its own internal rules.

The issue over the e-cigarette tax concerns the phrase “consumable material.” The Department of Revenue has interpreted that to mean the volume of fluid used in e-cigarettes or other vaping devices. But the Kansas Vapers Association says it should only apply to the volume of nicotine itself, not the water and other chemicals that make up vaping fluid.

The difference is significant for retailers, Duncan said, because at 20 cents per milliliter, the tax on a single-use e-cigarette with 5 milligrams of fluid would be $1, roughly the same as the item itself.

Other tobacco-related taxes, however, are based on the total volume of the products themselves, not on nicotine content. Ron Hein, who lobbies for a tobacco distributor affiliated with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., said the proposed regulations would ensure that all tobacco products are taxed in the same manner.

The e-cigarette tax was supposed to have taken effect July 1, 2016, but it was delayed six months because the Revenue Department had not yet put together forms and regulations that spell out how retailers are supposed to collect the tax and when and how they should remit it to the state.

Last month, as the deadline was about to expire, the Revenue Department proposed temporary rules and regulations. But the state board that gives the final OK for new regulations to take effect rejected those, saying the agency had not met the threshold needed to justify enacting temporary rules.

That means that although the tax technically went into effect Jan. 1, there is no mechanism to enforce it because there are no procedures in place for retailers to comply.

Anna Landis, an attorney for the Department of Revenue, told the panel that until permanent rules are adopted, the e-cigarette tax is essentially a “voluntary” tax, and while the agency would like for retailers to remit the tax, there is as yet nothing in place compelling them to do so.

A public hearing on the proposed permanent regulations is scheduled in March.