North Carolina has the sixth-lowest cigarette tax.

According to research by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an anti-smoking advocacy group, only five states have lower cigarette taxes: Florida, Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri and South Carolina.

North Carolina's 35-cents per-pack tax is far below the $1.15 median rate of Arkansas and Delaware. The lowest is 7-cents in South Carolina; the highest, $2.75 in New York.

Gov. Beverly Perdue has proposed raising the tax by $1 per pack. The new rate of $1.35 would tie Pennsylvania for 20th highest rate. 

It would also be the highest among neighboring states of Georgia (37 cents), Virginia (30 cents), South Carolina and Tennessee (62 cents).

The tax rates are as of April 1 of this year. The federal cigarette tax will increase to $1.01 on April 31. In addition, a few cities and counties charge local cigarette taxes.

Verenda Smith says Kentucky, Louisiana and Arkansas are in the Southeast, but not West Virginia.

The interim director of the Federation of Tax Administrators says she would use climate, history and economy to define the region. She says Southeastern states have muggy weather, often border the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean and were in the Confederacy.

That last quality would eliminate Kentucky, which did not secede, but Smith argued as a native of the state that it was divided by the Civil War. She would include Louisiana and Arkansas because of their warmer climates and Confederate membership.

"West Virginia is harder because they are geographically different from the rest of the Southeast, up there with Pennsylvania and Ohio," she said. "They don't have the growing seasons and the cotton, and they were on the Union side."

Still, Smith said it's an academic exercise.

"The question has no single answer," she said.

Who needs the federal government? We've got football.

Though the U.S. Census Bureau does not define the Southeastern region in its reports, another major — more important? — agency does: The Southeastern Conference.

The college athletic conference headquartered in Alabama has its own roster of states it considers to be in the Southeast:

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee.

It does not include North Carolina or Virginia, which are part of the Atlantic Coast Conference but are undoubtedly in the Southeast. It also skips West Virginia, a borderline case.

The definition is important because a recent political ad compares tax rates in the Southeast, which obviously differ depending on which states you include.

North Carolina has a higher tax burden than most Southeastern states.

But it has not been ranked the highest among the dozen states considered to be part of the Southeast by the Tax Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit.

Using as its guide the states considered Southeastern by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the foundation has ranked North Carolina between the fourth and second Southeast states in terms of tax burden since 1977.

A recent ad targeting Democratic Senate candidate Kay Hagan cited research by the Tax Foundation, among others, to back its claim that budgets she helped write "pushed North Carolina to the highest taxes in the Southeast."

In 2002, the year before Hagan became a co-chair of the Senate appropriations committee, the Tax Foundation ranked North Carolina the third highest state in the Southeast, below Kentucky and Arkansas.

Over the following five years, North Carolina remained in the top three, but it was never in the top spot.

In 2008, it dropped to fourth, below Arkansas, Georgia and Virginia.

Still, it was close. The differences between the rankings were often based on a tenth of a percent and the states were only a few slots apart in the overall rankings.

How do you define the Southeast?

We here at Dome headquarters have been poring over some tax data this morning as part of a fact-check, and we came across this interesting epistemological problem.

The general consensus of our group of reporters was that it includes the following states:

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

We did not include West Virginia, but the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis does in its regional breakdowns. That means a number of other groups, such as the Tax Foundation, also use it.

The U.S. Census Bureau does not define the Southeast.