The Brew Daddies

DC Beer’s Richard sits down with Katie Marisic, the Federal Affairs Manager for the Brewers Association (BA), to talk about BA’s advocacy role for the 8,000 craft breweries across the United States. Katie discusses the BA’s craft beer legislative victories in 2019 and previews the exciting activities coming up in 2020. Recap of 2019: Extension of the Excise Tax BreakBreweries have been subject to excise taxes since the Civil War. Excise taxes are placed on each barrel of beer produced by a US brewery (and foreign beer imports). In 2017, the BA successfully helped pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to lower the per-barrel excise tax from $7/barrel to $3.50/barrel for the first 60,000 barrels for domestic brewers producing fewer than 2 million barrels annually. It also cut rates for breweries producing more than 2 million barrels annually and foreign importers. This tax cut was in effect from January 1, 2018 to January 1, 2020. Katie and Richard discussed the wide-ranging benefits of the excise tax cuts since the o