Thursday, January 05, 2012

Craft Brew Tax Cut Proposed









Bloomberg has a great article today about some proposed legislation to give tax cuts to craft brewers:

This legislation would roll back excise taxes on small brewing companies by anywhere from 11 percent to 50 percent. The current tax rates, adopted in 1976 before the rise of micro- and craft breweries in the 1990s, have never been updated, requiring many brewers to pay levies calibrated for much larger operations once considered small.


Looks like some Ohio brewing folks are part of the push to make this happen:

The push for changes in the tax code is being led by the Brewers Association and a group of brewers and brewery employees, including Patrick Conway, a founder of Cleveland- based Great Lakes Brewing Co.; Greg Hardman, of Cincinnati-based Christian Moerlein Brewing Co.; and Steve Hindy, president of Brooklyn Brewery


Interesting that part of what this legislation would do is reset the ceiling so that some of the larger craft brewers, like Boston Brewing company, would still qualify. The makers of Sam Adams may seem like a big brewery, but as the article points out, they still only produce one 50th of what AB does. Sam Adams and Yuengling, also mentioned, are much more interesting choices than pretty much anything AB puts out, so I love to see them get a leg up on the macro-brews.

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