Do You Support the Fair BEER Act?

Some people feel that American beer is getting a raw deal, and they’ve set out to make some changes.

Specifically, smaller brewers (also known as micro-brewers or craft brewers) believe that the scales of trade are tipped in favor of the mega-breweries that dominate the airwaves and retail spaces of the USA.

These small-time brewers have organized, and have petitioned the federal government for redress. They are demanding a certain measure of relief from federal excise taxes via a graduated tax scale.

Toward that end, a national trade organization called The Beer Institute has convinced two congressman — Reps. Steve Womack, R-Ark., and Ron Kind, D-Wis. – to sponsor the Fair Brewers Excise and Economic Relief Act of 2015 (aka the Fair BEER Act).

Under the Fair BEER Act, all brewers and beer importers would pay a rising scale of federal excise tax:

No excise tax on the first 7,143 barrels;

$3.50/barrel on barrels 7,144-60,000;

$16/barrel on barrels 60,001-2 million; and

$18/barrel on every barrel above 2 million.

As you can see, enacting this act into law would indeed give some relief to micro-brewers, and would help them to compete against the big boys. Of course, the large brewers would also get a tax break on their first few truckloads. But the benefit of this act would help the micro-brewers the most.

What do you think? Should the scales be tipped in favor of the little guys in this way?