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For more than two years our national association WineAmerica as well as the Washington Wine Institute (WWI) have made our top federal priority the passage of the Craft Beverage and Modernization Tax Reform Act (CBMTRA), which is an unprecedented national beer, wine, and spirits industries’ combined effort to pass a long-overdue federal alcohol excise tax reform. WineAmerica, our national wine industry trade association fighting every day to protect and enhance our industry within Congress and our federal regulatory agencies, masterfully lead the effort for our industry and WWI rallied our congressional delegation and lobbied Congress to support this much-need tax reform.
We are elated to share with you today that our federal alcohol excise tax reform language survived through negotiations and will be included in the final passage of federal tax reform!!
We’d like to send a huge thank the members of the Washington State congressional delegation for their leadership in co-sponsoring the CBMTRA including:
• Senator Maria Cantwell
• Senator Patty Murray
• Rep Suzan DelBene
• Jaime Herrera Beutler
• Rep Dan Newhouse
• Rep Cathy McMorris Rodgers
• Rep Derek Kilmer
• Rep Pramila Jayapal
• Rep Dave Reichert
The bill will save all wineries, regardless of size, significant money through an excise tax credit mechanism which reduces the effective rate. For example, while the federal excise tax on table wine will remain unchanged at $1.07 per gallon:
• there will be a new tax credit of $1.00 on the first 30,000 gallons produced, making the effective tax rate $0.07 (seven cents) per gallon.
• The tax credit on the next 100,000 gallons produced is $0.90, and
• between 130,000 and 750,000 gallons produced the tax credit will be $0.535
• The tax credit limits out at a ceiling of 750,000 gallons.
• The legislation also increases the allowable alcohol level for table wine from 14% to 16%, reflecting the tangible impact of climate change on grape ripening in some states (this is HUGE for Washington State wines!)
• The small producer tax credit may be applied to sparkling wine OR table wine produced by a winery (but not both)