By Gurneet Samra

Additional tax hikes are brewing for Canadian beer industry

Jan 26, 2018 | 12:52 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Tax increases continue to pour in for Canadian beer brewers, with the industry facing another increase this year.

An advocacy group called Beer Canada says that since 2012, provincial taxes on beer have increased 28 percent in Alberta.

Now, the group says the federal government plans to introduce an automatic excise tax on April 1st, which will be adjusted yearly based on inflation rates.

Here in the city, the Medicine Hat Brewing Company said the costs associated with taxes are adding up.

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Kaiden VanCuren, general manager of Medicine Hat Brewing Co., said current taxes already make up nearly half the price for a pint.

“Right now [the price of] a full pint is about 47% tax, and then we have to put our ingredients in there, and our wages for our staff. We employ 32 people so we have to sell a lot of beer to make it work with these new taxes,” said VanCuren.

VanCuren added the brewery sources a majority of their ingredients locally, which can also get expensive at times.

But VanCuren said it’s important to them to support local and provincial businesses and products. In turn, the brewery gets a lot of local support from the community. He said they will do what they can to keep costs down in the wake of rising taxes.

“We definitely don’t want to increase our prices too much,” said VanCuren, “We’ll try to work with it, go with it, and keep our prices as low as we can, even with the increase in tax every year.”

Beer Canada has launched a petition asking Finance Minister Bill Morneau to scrap the escalating beer tax.