Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Reform of Alcohol Duty

We received an email from the CEO of Majestic Wines about the proposed alcohol duty changes. The changes he mentioned were so ridiculous that I thought the email was a scam or fake news (to use an in phrase), but no, it is an actual proposal put forward by the previous government, which is still being promoted by the current lot.
The proposal is to "tax by strength" which doesn't seem too bad until you realise that they propose to have a separate duty charge for each 0.1% of ABV!!!
That would mean wines between 11.5% and 14.5% ABV would have 30 different duty rates. Given that wines from the same vineyard but from different years may well have different ABVs can you imagine the impact such a system will have on the producers and retailers.
A lesson on how to destroy business.

Reminds me of when our daughter in law was the accountant at a small printing company, even the visiting VAT inspector couldn't tell her what was VAT liable and what wasn't.
I presume those clever, intelligent people who work in the Treasury and the Ministers who think it is a good proposal have never lived in the real world.

For those interested here is an interesting article https://wsta.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/WineEasementbrf072024.pdf

In case anyone thinks I have a vested interest in the wine trade I can assure I haven't apart from being a moderate consumer of the products, I just despair of the over complicated systems that emanate from governments of all parties. They don't apply the KISS principle.
Apologies for the rant

No apology necessary. Bl..dy daft idea!
There is similarity between nappies and politicians - they both need changing regularly and for the same reason!

Except to be fair, the broad brush of taxing by strength may well have come from a politician ... but I'd bet that fine detail was courtesy of the civil servants tasked with developing it.

K

Lovely little Argie Malbec in JSS at present Trivento 14 with lots of old cobblers written on the back 🤣

Blindingly obvious that the administration costs for such a system precludes this from ever happening.
When I worked for a short time for the Gov during FMD it was costing the creation and posting of an official letter was £25 back then in 2001

Well as Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister clearly showed, the civil servants should be changed regularly, too

Completely bizarre!

Crazy change - I also received the email from Majestic

If you applied common sense it would be against personal consumption.

First five bottle a week, sorry two, are at full tax and then further bottles at a reduced rate? Is that the right way round?

Equally hard to calculate and a waste of time but so much more fun as we could compare rates and form a high score table?

This is obviously such an utterly 'kin stupid proposal I'm wondering where they get these people from to come up with them. surely there can't be that many villages with spare idiots?

Make booze too expensive and it will simply encourage the increased production of black-market alcohol, which is (a) impossible to control with current resources and (b) infinitely more dangerous from a health point of view.

Brits have always been enthusiastic consumers of alcohol, we can't stop it. If they are bleating about the NHS costs then they should simply stop treating alcohol-related conditions as being self-inflicted.

Tim,


I seem to remember back in the 70's there was a massive increase in alcohol duties, which lead to an substantial increase in sales of home brew kits at the time, I remember shops popping up everywhere which only dealt in home brew kits and their paraphernalia. Where have they all gone from the High Street?

Whilst it is a good thing in principle to tax alcohol, perhaps they are a little too enthusiastic in the degrees of its application.

Obviously they anticipate that alcoholic % in drinks will fall to minimise (like sugar) the level of taxation raised. We all know this is not being done for the good of society and use NHS costs to try and justify their nanny state interventionism. It's to raise tax revenues.

Its all b#ll#cks. like the intention to review pub opening hours to reduce excessive drinking, it never works where ever it's in place. For example New Zealand used to have short opening hours many years ago and all that happened was people just drank as much in a shorter period of time, my Brother in law was in the bar trade over there.

I would never subscribe to any form of exclusion from treatment under the NHS, its a slippy slope that leads to much wider exclusion of other treatments over time. I'd prefer education .

I was reading an interesting article which inferred with some research behind it that if they tax vapes many smokers will return to tobacco smoking. It sometimes takes several generations thru education etc to break these habits, should that be the consensus of society and not the ruling elite.