Calgary beer importer laments tax changes

A small Calgary-based beer importer says the increase in taxes on beer brought in from outside of Albertahas crippled his business and he wantsconsumers to know about it.

Michael Tessier, thea co-owner of Artisan Ales, imports beer from places like Quebec and Belgium.

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In October, Alberta hiked taxes on imported beer by five per cent or 21 cents for a case of beer, but that increase was made much larger with revisions to graduated tax rates for small craft brewers.

The change thrilled some Alberta breweries thathave long argued that Alberta's tax regime gave outsiders an advantage.

But it's been downhill ever since for some importers, Tessier said.

"I figure I am doing about 40 per cent of what I did before the increase," he said.

"Because of the price increase, products are moving slower, there is a lot of dead stock on the shelves in the stores. We are losing iconic brands that influenced many of the local brewers. Beer is older on the shelves, it has been harder for an agent to rotate stock and maintain freshness."

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A Calgary pub manager agrees, to a point.

"We have seen two major differences," said Natasha Peiskar of National Beerhall.

"There was a markup on product that was quite significant and not due to what the breweries or the importers were doing [and] we actually saw a decrease in some of the products that were available to us to put on tap."

Peiskar says some of the beer producers they used to work withsimply left the Alberta market.

"Some breweries found that the taxation was just insurmountable and it didn't make financial sense for them to come into the province and sell their product when they weren't able to compete with other products on the market," Peiskar said.

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Has there been a public backlash though?

"There is actually not a lot of chatter," she said."A lot of our customers are not informed fully about what has happened."

And Tessier is hoping an education campaigninformation cards in some imported beerwill do just that.

"Just the unfairness of this and it is not us that increased the prices," Tessier said is the goal.

"The only one that is making more money out of this is the government."

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