The state representative from Athens said that he wouldn't support a 4-cent tax on beer to pay for additional police and firefighters, but such a measure probably would never pass anyway.
That's because Gov. Ted Strickland has indicated he won't support any new taxes or fee increases, which would include the beer tax, state Rep. Jimmy Stewart, said Monday.
I would say it's dead on arrival
Stewart said. I would tend to think if the governor says there are no new taxes and no fee increases that's pretty straightforward. I don't know what the point would be in offering that particular piece of legislation when the governor had said that.
The 4-cent-per-beer tax was originally suggested in Kent, where state Rep. Kathleen Chandler, a democrat, said she would consider proposing statewide enabling legislation that would allow municipalities to put the tax on beer. The Columbus Dispatch first reported the tax idea in Athens.
The idea drew guarded praise from Athens city Service-Safety Director Ray Hazlett, who said he would prefer a tax on all beverages, not just beer.
We certainly could use more police and fire personnel he said, adding that he did not know how much money the tax would generate. If we're going to do something to generate revenue. I think it's a reasonable way to do it.
The state of Ohio taxes beer at a rate of .14 cents per ounce on containers with less than 12 ounces and .84 cents per ounce on containers with more than 12 ounces. Those rates, which equate to about 10 cents of tax for a standard six-pack and 34 cents of tax for a 40-ounce bottle, generated $48.4 billion in statewide tax revenue in the fiscal year 2006, said Mike McKinney, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Taxation. The department does not keep local data on beer taxes, he said.
Even if Strickland hadn't indicated he would oppose tax increases, Stewart said he wouldn't personally support the beer tax measure. Stewart said he disliked that the tax would not apply to all cities and that it would be levied only on beer, not liquor.
Bar owners interviewed for this story also criticized the idea, but they disagreed about how drastically it would affect their businesses. Tom VanDyke, a manager at The Pub, said a 4-cent-per-beer tax would cost his bar a massive amount of money
and he would have trouble passing that cost along to consumers if no other bars raised their prices. He said he did not have specific figures to support his claims.
But Chandra Trembly, a manager at The Union Bar and Grill, said based on specific sales figures that the tax would cost the bar only about $20 on a busy Friday night and $8 on a slower Sunday. The Union sold 500 bottles of beer on Friday and 200 on Sunday, she said.
We probably could eat a cost like that
she said. That doesn't really seem that bad.
Though he had not assessed the impact of the tax, Joel Schechtman, owner of Skipper's Bar & Grille and The Blue Gator on Court Street, said it would be felt more acutely because of recent increases in the minimum wage and the cost of food service licenses.
Four cents is obviously not that significant
but then again where does it stop? he said. I pay sales tax. I pay property taxes. Where does it end? Why is the retailer the one that's always having to pay for it?
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