As someone who always dreads the GP question, “How much do you drink?” I suppose I should be celebrating, without alcohol, of course, the government’s decision to hike up duty on booze by over 10%, the highest increase in over half a century. I’ve been cutting back anyway for both financial and health reasons but I was intrigued to see this blatant lie from Rishi Sunak’s lying government: “On 1st August 2023, the alcohol duty system will become much simpler, taxing all alcoholic drinks by their alcohol by volume (ABV).” So, I decided to carry out an in-depth investigation, or as you might describe it, a blatant lift from an actual expert’s investigation, and guess what? It turns out that the simplification involves replacing three duty bands for wine with … er … 27. And guess what, again? Little ole wine drinker me is being fleeced.
On the face of it, all wine at between 11.5% and 14.5% is being increased by 44p a bottle, which is a substantial increase in itself, but that’s not all. In addition to duty, VAT at 20% is being applied to each bottle so the real increase is 53p for a bottle of wine. Before this increase, the cost of duty on wine was £2.67 but now it’s £3.20. It would be much worse than this had the government not imposed a flat rate increase in duty on wines (£2.67) from 11.5% to 14.5% until 2025, so watch that additional increase sneak in then. But if you happen to enjoy a bottle of wine that comes in at 15%, then oh dear.
There’s not temporary rate on 15% wine or indeed fortified wine like port and sherry. For a bottle of port at 20%, the duty increases from £2.98 to £4.28 a bottle. A 15% wine will cost an additional £1.17 a bottle. These are massive increases and they have certainly persuaded me to ‘save’ some money. Now let’s go back to Rishi Sunak’s smoke and mirrors”
“Because we left the EU we can make sure our alcohol duty system works for us,” says the treasury. Hmm, not quite. It’s true that in the EU we signed up to a minimum alcohol duty which is ten times less than the one we operate in the UK. As we are clearly nowhere near the amount we happily signed up to this is what we experts refer to as bollocks. We could have done almost anything we wanted with duties while in the EU, unless we proposed to reduce them by more than ten times the level they are now. Confused? I hope not, but Rishi Sunak will be thrilled if you are. You and I are being played as fools.
Only two countries in Europe impose higher duties on wine that Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives: Ireland and Finland – and that’s only by a matter of pennies:
I’ll be honest with you here and admit I don’t understand the non existent duty rates in all the countries at the bottom of the list, but I hope you get the gist of it, that we are being shafted, misled and, frankly, lied to. I know facts and figures can be tedious, but here are some more. This graph shows how much wine you are getting for your money:
The price at the top is the price you pay in the shop, the figure at the bottom of the bottle is how much wine you are getting for your money. Obviously, the more expensive wine you buy, the more bang you get for your buck, but this exposes another simple truth. People usually spend £6.50 on a bottle because it’s around the price they can afford. Someone spending £20 on a bottle on a regular basis is, I suggest, not counting the pennies. This is a blatant attack on those near the lower end of the wine buying market. Given the kind of government we have, this cannot be a coincidence.
So, how would you describe the actions of Sunak’s government? What would you call them? Compliments, I must add, are not permitted. I would call it like this. The drinker is already being shafted and this change could kill the goose that lays the golden egg for HMRC. This is yet another example of deception by Sunak and co. Simples.
Wine provides the most duty of all alcohol. Of £12.5 billion collected in total alcohol duty in 2022, £4.5 billion was on wine, compared with spirits (£4.2 billion) and beer (£3.6 billion). One thing is for sure, not that Sunak will care, is that they won’t be getting additional tax from me. The opposite, actually.
Perhaps, on another day, we can discuss the government’s decision to reduce duty in alcohol served in pubs, which teetotaller Sunak says illustrates his support for local pubs. In places like Bristol, and I am sure elsewhere, where many working class and even middle class areas no longer have pubs and haven’t had for decades, the cut in duty will only affect more affluent areas. This is Robin Hood in reverse, stealing from the poor to line the pockets of the rich. Same old Tories.
The answer to the GP question “How much do you drink?” is now far easier to answer, thanks to Sunak. He could be doing me an accidental favour with his sneaky backdoor tax rises. He won’t be doing the alcohol industry much of a favour if millions of us swap a glass of wine for some tap water.
