H.R. 4278

Federal legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 4278, is a bill which you want to bring to your representative’s attention.  The purpose of the bill is to lower taxes on beer produced by smaller brewers.

New legislation like H.R. 4278 could really make a difference in your local craft brew community

The new legislation will reduce the taxes on the first 60,000 barrels to $3.50.  The next 1,940,000 barrels will be taxed at $16.  According to Harvard University’s John Friedman’s study, Economic Impact of Small Brewers Excise Tax Reduction (H.R. 4278), the new law should create 2,700 new jobs the first 18 months and 375 new jobs each of the following years.  It creates new jobs because the money the brewery would be spending on taxes can go to hiring more help and improving their breweries.  It’s a win-win situation.  H.R. 4278 creates jobs, and it supports the local brewers we love so much.

This new beer law won’t affect the major brewers, but that’s not it’s intent.  This bill is designed to help the smaller breweries and brew pubs.  Brewers who produce more than 6,000,000 barrels a year cannot take advantage of the new rules.  To give you an idea of scale, A-B InBev produces over 300 million barrels of beer a year.  H.B. 4278 supports the beers from your local brewery that none of your friends outside your state have heard of.  The bill will also help the medium sized brewers making less than 6 million barrels of beer a year.  Hopefully it will reduce the price of local beers, and encourage beer lovers to drink locally too.

How to help your local brewer

You never know, this bill could help you start your own small brewery in the future!

Unfortunately this bill is still just a bill sitting on Capitol Hill (Gen-Xers can thank me later for getting that annoying ditty stuck in their heads).  This is where you come in.  If you want to see this bill become a law, you should contact your local represenative.  The Brewer’s Association has created a resource page to help you locate your represenative.  On the resource page, you will find a link to a list of current sponsors of H.R. 4278. If your Representative DOES NOT appear on this list, please take a moment and email your Member of Congress to ask them to cosponsor H.R. 4278.

Hopefully we can all help the brewer that gives us the craft beer we love so much, and push this bill into law.

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