Fiscal Policy & Regulation

A lovely example of the complexities of policymaking and the distributional impacts of taxation: the brewing sector are being asked for their views about reform of the small brewers' relief (SBR). 

At the moment it halves the beer duty for the smallest brewers but then ramps up with production, up to those producers who make more than 80,000 hectolitres. However, for those brewers at the margin, around the various tax thresholds, it appears that some of them are cutting production and jobs to avoid paying higher rates of tax, something not intended by the tax.