I've created a snippet:
<snippet>
<content><![CDATA[!important;]]></content>
<tabTrigger>!im</tabTrigger>
<description>!important</description>
<scope>source.css, source.less, source.scss, source.sass</scope>
</snippet>
But within a scoped source, the tab trigger ignores the '!', but sees the 'im'.
I have build 2217 on OS X 10.8.2