March 12, 2015
The
hispterfication of America’s alcohol industry proliferates apace.
Craft
breweries, micro-distilleries, local wineries -- it’s getting difficult for a
thick-bearded, bicycle-pedaling, thrift-store enthusiast to make up his mind.
But whatever adult beverage he picks, he’s certain to be hit with a hefty tax
bill.
At the
federal level, the
levy on spirits is $13.50 per gallon. Wine -- alcohol content not more than
14 percent -- is gouged at a rate of $1.07 per gallon, and beer brewed by large
companies gets smacked for $18.00 per barrel. Altogether, the three taxes don’t
do much for revenue-generation. They fail to cover a single percentage point of
Washington’s annual expenditures.
In 1990,
George H.W.
Bush’s disastrous “deficit-reduction” deal doubled the national beer tax,
and for a quarter of a century, despite lengthy lists of co-sponsors,
legislation to offer Joe Sixpack a break has been defeated. (Mothers Against
Drunk Driving is an intransigent foe.) But recently, the upsurge in small-scale
suds vendors has altered the debate. In the early 1870s, the
Republic had more than 4,000 breweries. The number plunged to a record low
of 89 in 1978, followed by a steady-but-glacial comeback. Then, a boom --
between 1995 and 2013, the number of breweries more than tripled.
Congressmen
are adept at spotting budding voting blocks, so a bipartisan coalition is
pushing House
and Senate
versions of the “Small Brewer Reinvestment and Expanding Workforce Act.” As
implied by its name, the bill’s relief is targeted, not general.
Breweries
that sell under 2 million barrels a year currently pay a tax of $7.00 on their
first 60,000 barrels. Above the threshold, the full, $18.00 levy kicks in. Big
boys in the brewski biz -- SABMiller,
Anheuser-Busch
InBev -- pay the top rate on every
barrel. But since the largest beer firms are multinational corporations,
there’s no way they can hope for help. The Small BREW Act is an enhancement of
the perk bestowed on their humbler competitors.
The
bill, as described by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Susan Collins (R-ME), sets the
tax at “$3.50 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels. For production between
60,001 and 2 million barrels, the rate would be $16.00 per barrel. Then, the
rate would be $18.00 per barrel. Breweries with annual production of 6 million
or fewer barrels would qualify for these new tax rates.” A rival
bill would exempt the tiniest brewers entirely, while imposing a schedule
similar to the Small BREW Act’s for sales of more than 60,000 barrels.
Meanwhile,
in the states, the goal of broad, deep, and uniform reductions in alcohol
taxation is similarly elusive. As Americans
for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist and Patrick Gleason wrote in a recent piece
for Reuters, “In addition to the federal excise tax, all 50 states apply
punitive taxes on beer. Tennessee, for example, levies the highest excise tax
on beer at $1.17 a gallon. Alaska comes in second, with a rate of $1.07 a
gallon.” Wine taxes in Florida, Alaska, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and South Dakotas far
surpass the federal take. For hard liquor, Washington, Oregon, Virginia,
Alabama, and Alaska are the worst offenders.
With a
new fiscal year starting in July, some governors and legislators are eyeing
drinkers to plug budget gaps. In January, Kansas’s chief executive -- a
Republican -- proposed a 50 percent increase in the state’s liquor tax. (For
now, at least, the hike appears to be dead.) Other elected officials are doing
the opposite. Wyoming’s beer tax is an almost comically low 62¢ per barrel, and
hasn’t been raised since its adoption in 1933. Nonetheless, it was decisively
exterminated by the Cowboy State’s House of Representatives this session. The
repeal’s sponsor charged that the tax was “antiquated and has outworn its
usefulness,” but when the bill reached the Senate, a GOP committee chairman let
it die.
To Nanny
Statists, heavily taxing spirits, wine, and beer is a scared obligation. (In
2011, The Washington Post sniffed
that with its alcohol taxes so low, Maryland “might as well change its official
nickname from the Free State to the Cheap Drunk State.”) But the health
benefits of moderate drinking, combined with the
inability of higher levies to deter hardcore alcoholics’ destructiveness,
should spark serious doubt about the value of taxes on booze.
Out-of-wedlock
births have a far greater “social cost” than drinking, but no one’s proposing a
tax on illegitimacy. Champagne, lager, tequila, rum, hard cider, whiskey, sake,
ale, moonshine, gin, sangria, vodka, brandy -- free them all. Don’t tinker with
alcohol taxes. Abolish them.
D. Dowd Muska (www.dowdmuska.com) writes about government, economics, and technology. Follow him on Twitter @dowdmuska.
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