Consumer And Import Taxes In The World Wine Market: Australia In International Perspective

Virtually all countries tax the consumption of wine (and other alcoholic beverages). However, the rates of taxation, and the tax instruments used, vary enormously between countries. This paper details for all OECD and some other countries the consumer tax rates as of 1996, showing specific or ad valorem excise or wholesale sales taxes, import tariffs, export subsidies and value-added or goods-and-services taxes. It also aggregates them into an ad valorem consumer tax equivalent (CTE) at various wine price levels (since many are specific taxes and so their CTE varies with the price). T he consumer tax equivalent tends to be lower the greater a country's per capita production of wine, especially for premium wine. Australia and New Zealand are shown to have relatively high consumer taxes, especially when VAT/GST taxes are ignored. These estimates will be an input into an empirical model of the world wine market that is currently under construction (to be used both for market projections and for analysing potential reforms to producer, consumer and trade taxes and subsidies).