Proposed tax changes worry brewers

Press, 12 September 1988, Page 7

Proposed tax changes worry brewers

PA Wellington Some brewers are concerned that beer drinkers will subsidise wine drinkers if proposed tax changes on alcoholic drinks go ahead. Under the changes the tax would increase by 5c a litre on draught beer and drop by 22c a litre on most wines.

Brewers feel the independent committee set up to review the taxes has given the wine industry favourable treatment. The committee’s report says its recommendation for draught beer was based on Ministry of

Transport submissions that draught beer was the chosen drink of the majority of drunken drivers.

An independent brewer, Mr Warwick Jameson, said yesterday he was concerned the committee had unfairly singled out beer, especially since it had the lowest alcoholic content.

He said the liquor industry as a whole funded the Alcoholic Liquor Advisory Council, which campaigns against drinking and driving. It was a knee-jerk reaction of drunken drivers to

claim they had been drinking beer because of its low alcohol content, he said.

The Brewers’ Federation executive secretary, Mr Des Fitzgerald, agreed. He said the committee was influenced by the wine industry lobby to an extraordinary degree. “What the committee has overlooked is that most wine is not drunk around elegant tables by candlelight but out of cardboard boxes by kids on the beach,” he said. The Wine Institute’s executive director, Mr Terry Dunleavy, said wine

should be taxed at a lower rate. . Wine was different from other alcoholic drinks because of its agricultural origins, its status as a food, and the circumstances in which it was drunk. The only link between the two drinks was they both contained alcohol, he said. Unlike breweries, the wine industry suffered from such natural disasters as storms. The New Zealand industry also had one of the highest rates of taxation in the world for a

wine-producing country. The independent committee was set up by the Minister of Revenue, Mr de Cleene, last year to review excise duties on alcoholic beverages and tobacco products because of concern about anomalies in the tax structure. Mr de Cleene’s press secretary, Mr Mark Turner, said yesterday it was set up to make' tax collection fairer. Liquor industry feedback on the recommendations from the liquor industry as a whole had been positive, he said.