Beer duty: the facts, presented handily

Not going to go on about this again but I just received a very useful press release from the BBPA. The trade body is calling for a 'return to clarity' over beer taxation, noting as I did yesterday that with an 'escalator' in place, announcing 'no new taxes' is wilfully misleading.

There were a few questions and comments after my post yesterday about how all the various figures and calculations around the swingeing duty increase add up, so I thought it would be useful to share the following table for the release.

BEER TAX INCREASE	7.2%
Predicted increase in tax of a typical pub pint	3.57p
Average new price of a pub pint of lager (4.2 per cent abv)	£3.05
New typical duty on a pub pint of lager	44p
New typical VAT on a pub pint of lager	51p
Combined VAT and duty increase this year	10p
Beer Tax increase since March 2008	35.4%
British Beer Tax, times higher than France	7.9
British Beer Tax, times higher than Germany	12.4
British Beer Tax, times higher than Spain	12.0

The release also contains one crucially important piece of information, which I urge you to share with everyone you know, especially your MP: with the 7.2% rise yesterday compounded by the 2.5% rise in VAT in January, 2011 has already seen the highest EVER increase in tax and duty on beer in any single year.