![]() Get the whole crew together for one of our creative shareable cocktails or grab a drink from one of our frozen drink machines. We’ll bring the wings and the best happy hour specials in Fort Worth. Is it a pregame? Is it the party itself? You decide. That magical time, full of endless possibilities. Inequalities in the economy are better addressed through broader tax and welfare policy, rather than through alcohol duty which should largely be concerned with addressing the health and social harms caused by alcohol consumption.Ahh, happy hour. Secondly, regressivity alone is not a strong argument against alcohol duty. Firstly, alcohol taxation does not appear to be particularly regressive, given relatively high rates of non-drinking among lower income households. Vodka is in fact the most widely consumed spirit in the UK, accounting for about 30% of total consumption.Īrguments related to the regressive nature of excise duties are also flawed. Whisky’s dominance in the political discourse around spirits, with its evocation of images of charming rural distilleries, thus seems highly misguided. Analysis by Public Health England found that, in 2015, there were 167,000 working years of life lost due to alcohol consumption – 16% of all working years lost in that year.Īrguments used to call for a more favourable tax treatment for spirits tend to focus on the need to support the Scotch whisky industry, yet UK-produced whisky accounts for just 17% of spirits consumed in the UK. Jobs-based arguments also ignore work lost through excessive alcohol consumption. For example, jobs-based arguments used to justify cider and spirits duty freezes ignore the fact that cider accounts for a very small number of jobs in the economy, and the fact that about 90% of whisky is exported from the UK – meaning duty changes and domestic consumption patterns have little bearing on jobs. Arguments often used to justify duty freezes and favourable treatment for certain beverages are deeply flawed.Alcohol duty has become highly politicised and often driven by spurious arguments, rather than what evidence suggests would be most optimal – whether that be in terms of raising revenue, supporting jobs or improving public health outcomes. Lack of consideration for the alcohol tax system as a whole.Brexit could open up possibilities to rationalise alcohol taxation in the UK. This is a reflection of EU regulatory requirements, which require wine and cider to be taxed in this way. While beer and spirits duty are taxed according to pure alcohol content, wine and cider duty are taxed according to the volume of the final product. For these products, incentives to reduce product strength are limited. While beer duty increases or holds steady, on a per-unit of alcohol basis, with the strength of the product, this is not true for cider or wine. Mixed incentives to produce weaker strength products. ![]() While a relatively weak 6% ABV bottle of wine faces duty of 50 pence per unit of alcohol, as of the time of writing a 6% ABV cider faces duty of just 7 pence per unit of alcohol. Significant disparities in duty charged for same strength products.The report notes a number of key issues with the current alcohol duty regime: This report explores the case for reforming alcohol duty in the United Kingdom, and the principles which should underpin a new, improved alcohol duty regime.
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