Italy: Assobirra calls for a reduction in beer excise duties

Budget law time and Italy’s Assobirra is back to call for a reduction in excise duties, last year achieved only for small breweries, to allow increased investments in a sector that is not losing its growth potential, in the face, however, of consumption that has been falling for a couple of years after a period of strong growth, Il Sole 24 Ore reported on November 17.

The request is to reduce excise duty on beer from 2.99 to 2.97 euro per hectolitre and Grado Plato, with an estimated cost of 4.7 million euro in 2026; according to Assobirra "a limited but strategic investment to support a sector that generates widespread wealth and skilled employment", recalling that "the industry generates 10.4 billion euros of shared value, employs around 112 thousand people and, to date, each production worker creates 31 jobs along the supply chain. In ten years, beer has produced 92 billion in wealth and 24 thousand new jobs, contributing around 4 billion euro a year to general taxation, of which 1.5 billion in VAT and 689 million in excise duties in 2024'.

In the last two years, however, there has been a decline in all parameters, aggravated by the increase in excise duties (+20 million euro in 2024 alone), producers claim, against a 1.5% drop in consumption and -7.8% in exports.

The excise duty, Assobirra points out, represents up to 40% of the consumer price in the most popular formats, such as 66cl, while on an average draught beer it is around 80 cents. "Reducing excise duty does not only mean lightening a regressive tax," says Federico Sannella, president of AssoBirra, "but restoring momentum to investments, employment and innovation.

Between 2017 and 2022, in fact, previous rate reductions have produced concrete results: +10% in national consumption, +11% in production, +5% in barley cultivation and the launch of projects for Italian hops. The Budget Law 2025 also introduced an important multi-year rate reduction for small breweries up to 60,000 hectolitres of production, a meritorious measure even if limited to only 3% of national production'.