(Nashville, TN) – The Tennessee Senate voted 30-1 to pass the Tennessee Beer Tax Reform Act of 2013 on Monday. The vote follows last week’s passage of a related bill in The House of Representatives. Correction: last week’s House passage was only in a committee. Passage of the House vote, which takes place on Wednesday, would effectively send this bill to the governor.

The Tennessee Malt Beverage Association actively lobbied for the bill with its Fix The Beer Tax campaign. A press release from January identified the changes as follows:

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Tennessee’s beer tax is a combination of three taxes. Federal and state excise taxes are calculated by volume, and then a 17-percent local wholesale tax is calculated on price. (Later, at the cash register, consumers pay the additional sales tax.) So, for brewers and wholesalers, when costs such as fuel, labor and materials go up, the beer tax climbs ever higher.

The Tennessee Beer Tax Reform Act of 2013 addresses this situation by proposing that like 48 other states, Tennessee bases its beer tax on volume. (Kentucky also has an added wholesale tax, though the Bluegrass State’s rate is considerably lower than Tennessee’s and its effective rate is $23.96.) The Tennessee reform proposal is revenue neutral because it maintains the wholesale tax revenues at current levels, while slowing the explosive growth in revenues created by a price-based model that dates to 1954.

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Proponents of the bill argued that Tennessee has exorbitantly higher taxes than other states, “currently 12 percent higher than even Alaska.”

Only Senator Mae Beavers voted against the bill on Monday.

The changes take effect as soon as the governor signs the bill.