HR 4278: Reduce the excise tax for small brewers

The Brewers Association notes:

• Currently, a small brewer that produces less than 2 million barrels of beer per year is eligible to pay $7.00 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels produced each year. Reducing this rate to $3.50 per barrel would provide approximately $18.0 million per year to help strengthen our nation's smallest brewers and support their efforts to maintain and generate jobs.


• Once production exceeds 60,000 barrels, a small brewer must pay the same $18 per barrel excise tax rate that the largest brewer pays at over 100 million barrels. Lowering the tax rate to $16 per barrel on beer production above 60,000 barrels up to 2 million barrels would provide small brewers with an additional $26.2 million per year that would be used to support significant long-term investments and create jobs by growing their businesses on a regional or national scale.


• The small brewer tax rate was established in 1976 and has never been updated. Since then the annual production of America's largest brewery increased from about 45 million to 107 million barrels. The ceiling defining small breweries is 2 million barrels. We support raising this ceiling to 6 million barrels to more accurately reflect the intent of the original differentiation between large and small brewers in the US.

They've posted a page with much more information and tools you can use to contact your elected representatives in Washington. Use those tools to ask your representatives to co-sponsor HR 4278. You just might be helping to save your local brewery in the process.