Death and Taxes, 2010

Benjamin Franklin was speaking of the United States Constitution and its promise of permanency when he added that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” The alcoholic has additional certainty on both accounts.

Taxes conjured up by the sober souls at the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau are fixed dollar amounts per unit of beverage. Beer is taxed at $18 a barrel (31 gallons) or $0.05 per 12 ounce can. Taxes on wine depend on alcohol content, ranging from $1.07 per wine gallon ($0.21 per 750 ml bottle) for wine with 14% alcohol or less to $3.15 per gallon (0.62 per bottle) for wine with up to 24% alcohol. The scale for distilled spirits slides according to percentage proof: 100 proof liquor (50% alcohol) is taxed at $13.50 per proof gallon and this tax is adjusted, depending on the percentage of alcohol in the product.

In addition, there is the state sales tax which, as of February 1, 2010, depending on where you happen to be, might be zero (Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon), 8.25% (California), or something in between (everywhere else). And then there are the specific state taxes on spirits, table wine, and beer. The only real common denominator here is that all states tax by the gallon.

If you only drank on credit cards, or in the highly improbable event that you have perfect recall, you can work out quite easily the additional sums you reserved for alcohol. At the national level, alcohol taxes accounted for 0.5 percent of federal revenues, down from over 5 percent in 1950, so even the heaviest drinkers might be surprised to find that it’s a relatively small part of the account, although the account itself, for some, might as well be the size of the federal budget.

That tab aside, and certainty applying to the darker part of Franklin’s formulation, how much has been paid towards that other inevitable levy?