ALCOHOL LOBBYISTS, those perennial darlings of lawmakers in Annapolis, are fighting tooth and nail to maintain Maryland's rock-bottom tax rates on beer, wine and spirits, last changed decades ago and now among the lowest in the nation. From the gnashing of the lobby's teeth, you'd think that raising Maryland's tax on liquor to the national average or a little higher would sink the local economy and send barflies skittering across state lines.
Lawmakers have long swallowed such drivel in return for generous campaign contributions, which it would be impolite to call bribes. Isn't it time that the state asked this long-coddled industry to bear some slight burden to help close a severe budget deficit?
A proposal before the General Assembly would increase taxes on alcohol by a dime a drink, thereby raising about $216 million in new revenue. In percentage terms, that's a steep increase but only because Maryland has left its current rates unchanged for so long - since 1955 for spirits and since 1972 for wine and beer. The result is that the tax on hard liquor is lower than in all but three other states, and the taxes on beer and wine rank 44th and 37th in the nation, respectively. Maryland is the nation's Cheap Drunk State.
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10 comments:
"A dime a drink" doesn't sound like much on the surface. Problem is that there is 1 drink for every ounce in a bottle making the tax on a quart of liquor $3.20 and $6.40 a half gallon. If this happens in Ocean City, the Town of Fenwick will become a boom town.
Good point Al
The dime a drink tax was tried in Allegheny County, PA to help fund the transit system...they raised so much money they ended up reducing the tax 3%.
Alcohol is not a necessity and should be taxed as such. If you can't afford the tax, maybe you really don't need that drink.
"Alcohol is not a necessity and should be taxed as such."
Are you a member of the O'Malley administration or Chavez's?
I say tax the heck out of them. Maybe then they'll leave us poor smokers alone.
Al, I am neither, I'm actually a free thinker that doesn't back either party, and I've voted rep, dem, ind. and lib.
This is a tax that you are not required to pay, but choose to pay by buying the product.
Taxes are a fact of life, no one likes them, but we all pay them. Taxes collectively improve our quality of life as a country.
We tax the heck out of smokers, so lets get all the vices in the pot shall we. That dime won't keep me out of my favorite bars (none of which are in Fenwick)
Smokers are taxed because Government knows it's an addiction and difficult for most people to avoid the smoke and the taxes. For the most part, the only business on the shore is chickens, healthcare, and tourism. Tourists don't come to the beach to look at historical sites. They come to have a good time at a place they can afford. Now a Delegate from MOCO with no particular interest in the success of tourism on the shore, can see nothing but a funding source with his "Dime a drink" proposal. Anything that hurst tourism here hurts business which will kill jobs. These are jobs that employ people as far away as Pocomoke.
You can sit in your shell and deflect this as political and it is no such thing. It doesn't matter than you don't support the American political system but your ideology is clearly Liberal and consistent with Maryland's chosen electorate and relentless taxation.
Finally, it would be interesting to understand how you explain an unemployment rate near 10% and the resultant quality of life is being improved through more taxation.
I hardly sit in my shell, and am far from a liberal.
Alcohol is no different than tobacco, both will kill you, eventualy. So lets tax them equally. Actually a dime a drink would equal the $2 a pack tax on cigs.
Where were you when they kept raising the tobacco tax??? Did you speak in opposition of that as passionately as you are alcohol??? I doubt it. But now the government has gotten around to taxing something you care about, and whoa nellie bar the door! A whole dime on that beer the bartender just pulled for you.
As far as killing tourism at the "Family resort" I highly doubt a dime a drink will do that. At a happy hour price of $5 a drink for a mixed frozen drink, you would have to by 50 drinks to equal the cost of the drink in taxes collected. If you are drinking more than fifty drinks while on vacaton, perhaps you should be vacationng at the Betty Ford clinic.
How have taxes improved your quality of life tody? Lets see, we are debating on this wonderful thing called the internet, paid for at least partially by the federal gov't years ago. Use your cell phone today? Thank the military for the technology. Drive to the store, how were the roads, maybe a little bumpy, but at least they are paved. Thank the police officers for keeping us safe, as well as the military.
Tying the unemployment rate to a sin tax is a stretch. If a business has to close because of a dime a drink tax, it wasn't on very sound financial footing to start with. Collecting the tax isn't any harder or time consuming than the sales tax we already collect, computers do all the work now anyway.
"Alcohol is no different than tobacco, both will kill you, eventualy. So lets tax them equally"
So will the Sun.
You gotta be with Chavez.
You've come out twice with I gotta be with Chavez, and I can only assume you mean Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. A man who bases his own political agenda on a mix Bolivarianism and Socialism.
Bolivarianism as defined by wikipedia is:
economic and political sovereignty (anti-imperialism).
Grassroots political participation of the population via popular votes and referendums (participatory democracy).
Economic self-sufficiency (in food, consumer durables, etc...).
Instilling in people a national ethic of patriotic service.
Equitable distribution of Venezuela's vast oil revenues.
Eliminating corruption.
Not finding a dime a drink tax in there.
And if the best you have for me is the sun will kill me too, I'm gonna take this under-taxed glass of great wine I have and curl up with a good book.
But I will leave you with this final thought...We are all dying, have been since the day we were born, and guess what..they got a tax for that too.
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