Support New Zealand's craft beer brewers - Sign the Petition

[nzbrewer]

Sign the Petition -

The NZ government is considering raising taxes for all beer brewers to offset the social costs of irresponsible drinking. This could put some small craft breweries out of business. This poll argues that a 'one size fits all' increase in taxation will have a disastrous effect on New Zealand's boutique breweries - and that these brewers are the ones we should be rewarding not penalising.

Why? Because small boutique and craft breweries emphasise taste, flavour and create environments that encourage sensible and responsible drinking, whereas the Big Two brewers (DB and Lion Nathan - both foreign-owned) discount their beers to gain market share. They tend to target their advertising towards young people and encourage buying decisions made on the basis of price - bang per buck - not beer quality.

For the reasons above, we will lobby MPs and other supporters of great New Zealand craft beers to give tax breaks to small Kiwi-owned brewers. Sign our poll if you want New Zealand's craft brewers to survive!

Thank Mic Dover for starting the petition

Sign the Petition -

[Greig McGill]

Eh? Find and prosecute? If you removed public health funding, they'd have to pay for their own misdeeds. Not much other option really. Expensive premiums, or a hell of a one off bill for liver failure.

[Stu McKinlay]

Vandalism, disorderly behaviour, assault, murder... surely these are also "costs" being added together to come up with the magical figure that allows for a nice jump in government revenuw.

Privatise the police force too shall we?

[Greig McGill]

Oh sure, but there are laws to deal with those already. If I had my way I'd privatise everything except the police. They'd have more than enough funding for enforcement then. ;)

[nzbrewer]

maybe supermarkets should be taxed for selling beer at a loss to bring people through the door.

[James P]

Is it the supermarket, or the brewers that reduce the prices? I thought most "specials" in supermarkets were becuase the manufacturer reduced their sell price, or the stock was too old.

[nzbrewer]

beer is the best loss leader. they will sell Heineken below cost to get people in the door, especially over the summer months. The big brewers will discount their beer to gain or keep market share but supermarkets take it even further.

It is a price / volume issue. If you can sell multiple pallets of Heineken you maybe happy with a 1% - 3% margin, vs an unknown craft beer brand, that you might only sell a handful of 6 packs or even single bottle. Margin might be more likely 25% - 35%, which just compounds the dollar price problem.

Imagine the price of craft beer if margins were as low as 1%-3% it would help sell more?

[James P]

Remember the only people drinking craft are those that have either tried it and never turned back, or those that are educated wherever possible.

Craft brewers don't tend to advertise in the mainstream, they don't sell dreams, they don't get frontages in bars, or supermarkets.

Price is one thing, image another and flavour yet another. You need to be able to educate the masses!

[colin m]

I agree with all points raised, but if the big breweries didnt offer cut price beer then someone else would- there is (unfortunately) a demand for this sector in the market.

[vdog]

Just playing devils advocate here, but...

The thing that seems to exclude craft beer from binge drinking is cost. If there are cost advantages available to small producers, theoretically at least some of the cost differential between their products and those of the 'big boys' would reduce, making their products more affordable for those who'd be binge drinking. This could damage the argument that binge drinkers don't drink craft beer, as there'd no longer be as big a cost barrier to that.

I'd expect the big breweries to try and make that argument.

[HerrSchnapps]

But I could always just brew, say, 50,000 litres of tasteless barley water for dirt cheap and call myself a craft brewer, pay less tax and go head to head with Tui or Export for the same market.

[Christian]

My 2 cents:

I support the spirit of the petition but would worry about the design of any tax scheme and it's unexpected consequences and incentives. It's easy to hate the big breweries but there are lots of people who can only afford cheap beer, drink it in moderation and cause no problems - in the same way as we craft drinkers like to think of ourselves. On the other hand, it's easy to have a couple of craft beers, then some cheap ones and get messed up (or all craft beer if you're wealthy).

Some will argue that it's not fair that all of society should pay for the externalities of irresponsible drinkers - but how is moving to a situation where all drinkers bear the cost of the idiots any better or fairer? Do drivers pay for all the costs of accidents? Do bad eaters pay all the costs of obesity? We do not want to get to the point as has happened to smokers where they end up paying more in tax than the external costs of smoking. These are some of the issues with socialised provision of public services but that's another whole issue. If the state increases excise tax and claws back some of it's costs, will it reduce tax in other areas to offset this? Hell no!

The research behind the suggested tax hike is dubious and this in my opinion is where our efforts should be focused. The research does not count the benefits of alcohol consumption and confuses external costs with those borne by the individual. Economist Eric Crampton has done a lot of analysis on this issue: http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.com/2009/05/costs-of-everything...

This dodgy research simply cannot be used to justify a rise in the price of beer.

[HerrSchnapps]

Funny enough I emailed Eric today with a link to this, and to see if he would give some more insite into the issue, seeing as a) He likes beer (especially Epic), b) he's looking into this issue at the moment, and c) he's a cool lecturer (well, he was in the paper of his I took)