(Brooklyn, NY) – BeerPulse received comment from Brooklyn Brewery Co-Founder and President, Steve Hindy, on Wednesday afternoon regarding the recent ruling in New York that ends certain tax exemptions for in-state companies. Hindy did not respond to comments made from Shelton Brothers regarding Brooklyn Brewery on Tuesday.
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“The NYS ruling is a body blow to our business and the 90 other small breweries in the state. It will cost Brooklyn Brewery $500K this coming year.
We are talking with legislators about ways to mitigate the impact of the ruling. I believe the intent of the tax exemption was to encourage investment in the state’s brewing industry, and it clearly has worked. The intent was not to favor in state breweries over out of state breweries.
There should be a way to achieve this without running afoul of the Constitution. New Jersey, for instance, offers a tax credit for investment in NJ based breweries. Maybe New York can do something similar.
We just invested $12 million in our brewery in Brooklyn. I think NY legislators will want to insure that NY brewers continue to invest in New York.”
Projected 40-45 million in sales in 2012…what is the extra tax, around $.02 a beer? i think your consumers would be ok with a tiny price increase. it’s not the end of the world, tell your head brewer to calm down.
There is a whole lot of “he said”, “they said” clouding up this issue and that is keeping people from getting down to the trub of it. Assumptions and blame are like all of the detrimental proteins and enzymes hanging around to keep that potentially great beer from ever happening.
Let’s drop some finnings into this. Remove the labels, the assumptions, and the blame and ask yourself this.
Do you penalize Peter because Paul complained? The trub lies in the answer.
While I don’t doubt Steve Hindy’s estimate of how much this tax increase will cost his company, I doubt his accuracy. Brooklyn Brewing will raise prices, passing the tax burden along to the consumer. That’s how all business taxes are paid. No company voluntarily pays taxes without passing them on.
Not that simple Jeff Holt, almost every brewery in the country had already begun to adjust their price scale in 2012 due to price increases on raw materials, hops, malt and packaging materials, let alone the increase in fuel costs. It is not as simple as dividing .02 into every beer sold. They are New York based brewery, but not ALL of their beer sold by any stretch is in New York, this has a rolling impact and at the end of the day this hurts smaller breweries much much worse than it does Brooklyn. This was a sad business me first move by the Shelton Bros, among many that has happened in the craft world the last few years. It is Brooklyn’s job as one of the largest brewers in the state, with a big seat on both the New York State Brewers Association and a place at National to defend the entire turf of their association. People have to stop looking at this as Brooklyn, stop pretending that they can get into the Days of our Lives crap the Shelton Bros started by taking private conversations public and look at the larger point.
The turf warfare among craft, vs importers vs. macro is just in its infancy.
Buy craft, buy New York, buy Brooklyn. Boycott Shelton. Especially in New York State.
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What offends me is that the increase was caused by a bunch of importers whining that they weren’t getting the same treats as a local brewer.
They were *not* “pointing out that they were getting screwed”, they were bitching because small businesses were not getting taxed as heavily as they were. So, instead of fighting to lower the taxes on imported beers, they decided to *make sure* the local brewer got hit with higher taxes.
It was an unnecessary, spiteful and petty move.