Proposed tax adjustments for craft beer breweries

A government proposal on adjusting tax schemes for small beer breweries has raised plenty of concerns among the craft beer brewers. 

To give you a bit of background information, the UK government has introduced a the Small Brewers Refief (SBR) in 2002, which is a tax break scheme to enable small breweries to become more profitable. Brews that produce up to 5000 hectoliters per annum qualified for this tax relief of 50%. The updated proposal suggests to reduce this maximum quanitity by more than half to 2100 hecroliters.

The majority of breweries in the UK fall below this threshold but this change will still have a considerable influence on about 150 small breweries in the UK which produce somewhere in between 2100 to 5000hl of beer. A hope for those breweries are other smaller tax breaks that are currently being discussed SMEs of all industries.

The Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) states that the majority of their members have raised major concerns about the SBR adaptions, especially the timing of this proposal makes it even more problematic since most breweries are still struggling to recover from the past months.

This proposal has been put forward by the government and will enter into technical consultation later this year before any adjustments can be made. Undoubtedly such a change would limit the growth of many breweries and force them to keep their output constant/ reduce it although demand could be increasing. We will watch this space and share any updates with you.

 

Information taken from the SIBA, Amber Energy and Independent.