Excise duties amount to Euro 3.02 per Plato degree per hectoliter of beer. A little elementary arithmetic will allow us to evaluate the matter in the correct perspective and to reconsider the complaints of certain beer chroniclers and bloggers.
A concrete example: the excise duty on a 0.5 liter bottle of ABV 5% beer (we have converted the Plato degrees into the better known degrees of alcohol by volume) comes to Euro 0.18 (paid at the moment of production or importation).
Contrary to the common opinion among craft brewers, excise duties have a greater effect on cheap beers, those piffling beers of the industrial breweries, than beers of higher price. By way of example, say we buy a 0.5 liter bottle at a supermarket, it looks as follows:
– For a cheap beer that costs Euro 0.8, 22.5% of the purchase price goes to excise duty.
– For a premium beer that costs Euro 2.00, the effect of the excise duty goes down to 0.09%.
– For a craft beer that costs Euro 4.00, the effect goes down to 0.045%.
In a bar or restaurant, of course, the prices of each type of beer are higher and the percentage effect lower.
Excise duties in certain other European countries are lower, for example, 26% of the Italian level in Germany, 27% in Spain, and 33% in the Czech Republic. On the other hand, they are three times as great in the United Kingdom and four times as great in Finland.
Excise duty on beer does not represent a determining factor on the price as it does with cigarettes and gasoline. Excise duty on beer amounts to about Euro 750 million a year, and, of course, it would be better if there weren’t any. We will in a subsequent article propose an alternative in substitution in order to facilitate the consumption of beer.
