Uncle Sam wants your beer money.
If it comes down to it, I have a suggestion: let’s drink a bunch of Dog Fish Head, but throw the Miller Light in the river. It seems the beer tax debate continues with some pundits questioning whether anyone should make a stink about the ABV based excise tax increase. Orr at City Paper took issue with the industry and blogosphere’s protest:
What these brewers were saying is that a climb in prices would depress beer sales. But any drinker can tell you beer prices have been climbing for two years, a result of shortages of hops, barley, and other cereal grains. Prices continue to climb. And yet, the Brewers Association notes, craft beer’s market penetration continues to grow, even accelerate.
Proof-based taxing is undoubtedly rash and imprecise. Hopefully lawmakers will see this and refine the proposal before going forward. But if health care funding is a must, let’s not dismiss excise taxes out of hand just yet. They might not even hurt beer sales. And the proposed increase? Only $3 per case.
Are All Beer Taxes Bad? – Young & Hungry – Washington City Paper.
In some ways he’s right. The industry is doing great and doesn’t seem to be affected by the economy… yet. The $3 increase number seems almost trivial if that’s all that stands in the way of me getting my Bells Hopslam (which was going for like $25 a six pack I think.)
But…
I’m not sure where the $3 increase figure came from and it probably will vary when you go beyond the lagers and wheat beers of the world.
The bottom line is this tax unfarely targets a nascent and growing industry of entrepreneurs that have worked hard to carve out a niche where -for a long time- there has been monopoly of light lager beers. Craft beer has a number of styles that are dramatically higher in alcohol. While Coors and Bud will barely bat an eye at this tax increase with their monolithic economies of scale and cheap low alcohol product, the artisan who just spent all morning brewing up a 10% ABV barleywine will be penalized for his innovation. Sure healthcare needs to be funded, but levying a tax on the part of the beer industry that is working to make beer a healthy part of America’s food culture instead encouraging frat parties and beer pong seems to be working in the wrong direction. If a heavier tax burden does slow the growth of the craft beer industry or lead to the failure of some startup breweries, we will just be back shotgunning cans of Budweiser and mindless repeating man-law commercials.
Will it stop me from buying craft beer? No, probably not, but it might make me limit where I spend my dollars. In the end I am glad they haven’t decided to tax wood fired oven baked pizzas or our nation’s brewpubs would surely be in trouble.
Tags: brewers association, city paper, hopslam, taxes
