This Holiday Season, Ohio Craft Brewers may get a lasting gift from legislators in Washington D.C.
There’s a federal excise tax on every barrel of beer produced, but some small brewers have been getting a big tax break.
Instead of paying $7 a barrel, microbreweries have been paying just $3.50.
Mary MacDonald at the Ohio Craft Brewers Association says that saves even the tiniest taproom thousands of dollars each year.
“The people who are most critically impacted by it are our smallest members, and the neighborhood taprooms are the ones getting hit hardest through COVID,” she says.
Now, the house and senate want to make that tax rate permanent as part of the 2021 omnibus spending package.
With the current tax break set to expire on New Year’s Day, MacDonald says passage is important, “especially in a year like 2020, when everything else is burning down around us. We need the certainty to know what our taxes are going to be going into the new year.”
And so Ohio Craft Brewers may soon have something to toast.