The French government is proposing a 120-160% tax on brewers. Wine and Champagne would be exempted.
http://bloom.bg/11JCwiC#ooid=NkMXlkNzpeTmyKKKnQP6V3J8_YUEdbwD
Paul
Thw wine industry is much larger than the brewing industry in France. They know where the votes come from. Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
Hey, Phil…
Pig Dogs…I spit in their general direction!
Yeah Phil…just wow…
I thought that was an increase on the existing tax rate on beer, which is low. So the result is that the price of a bottle of beer goes up 0.08 Euro. Not good to have it go up, but not taxed at 160% of the cost of the bottle of beer. They still will not be the highest in Europe for beer tax.
The wine industry does have a good lobby.
The biggest problem the French brewers have with the law is two-fold.
First, it unfairly targets a specific part of an industry, while the other alcoholic beverage producers get a tax hike of around 20-30%.
Second, while there are reductions in the tax rate for certain production sizes, both the biggest (InBev, Kronenbourg) and the smallest (Doughboy Brewing Company) get hit at the same rate, which doesn’t make much sense when you’re giving lip service in the French parliament to ‘our small family artisans.’ Plus the tax increases with ABV, so as you can imagine that hurts the little guys even more.
On top of all that, there’s a third thing that really gets me, and that’s the attempted legislation of morality via taxation. The complaint is that too many people are getting sick due to drinking too much cheap beer, so hey, let’s make it harder for them to do so. That won’t work, especially when you can get shitfaced much more efficiently on Beaujolais Nouveau for €3/ liter.
On the other hand, I think this could actually be a good thing for French beer quality overall. It is incredibly easy to open a brewery in France, and the general population does not have the same education on what beer should be as do Americans. This means that, due to the low barrier to entry, any jerk can make beer and sell it, and since people like to buy locally and “artisanal” they’ll buy that guy’s beer. Since they don’t know what good beer should taste like, they think this sour/infected/sugary/hot mess is what real beer is supposed to taste like, and when you show them something good they don’t know what to make of it.
So how is the tax thing a good thing in this scenario? The guys who just phone it in will be unable to compete for that stretched consumer euro because the consumer won’t put up with a more expensive but still crappy product. The innovators will absorb that market share, and (hopefully) crowd out the crap beer with really great beer, leading more people to realize that craft beer can really actually be excellent.
good analysis phil.
Isn’t France supposed to be a socialist paradise?
Gotta pay for all that “free” stuff somehow.
Some facts on tax rates on beer.
http://www.brewersofeurope.org/docs/publications/BED2012.pdf
Without trying to get political, Former Eastern block is low. Scandinavia is very high as I found in my business trips to Sweden. My Swedish friends said it was a “sin tax”.
Edit - I knew the tax in Germany was low. It was lower on wine, from what my friends said.
Sorry if anyone thought this was about politics. I saw the article, thought of Phil and thought people would find it interesting.
I was rather shocker by the weight of the tax on the brewer. Even in Iowa where no “sin” makes the state more money than booze doesn’t hit breweries this hard. Iowa makes it’s money off hard liquor. 
Paul
It’s absolutely about politics IMO but I doubt there are any PS or Front Gauche on this forum, so I’m not worried about offending anyone.
Another thing coming into effect soon is the change to the VAT on food - from 5 and change to 9%, and if I’m not mistaken, VAT on alcohol itself from 9 to 14.5%. That will probably have the bigger impact, because 160% increase on excise tax on beer only changes the price by 10 cents, but a 4% increase on all restaurant purchases can really add up.
All of this is pretty sad, really, because the taxes they’re raising are going to pay for the lie that is the 35 hour work week, among other things. I could go on, but I won’t, but if any of you ever come to Paris ill surely talk your ear off about it.
As an aside, what’s fun is that I know every single person in that video. And La Fine Mousse is a great bar.
I hate misleading headlines like “160% tax increase.”
Without getting into whether sin or consumption taxes are actually a good idea, In MO we have the lowest tobacco taxes in country. They recently tried to raise tobacco taxes by $0.0365 per cigarette, or $0.73 per pack, which was roughly a 750% increase in the tobacco tax. Of course people were outraged by the 750% number, and no one was aware the actual increase would be less than 75 cents.