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On the legality of distilation.
Feb. 11th, 2010 03:10 pmIn a recent friends-locked post, I mentioned that home distillation of alcohol is illegal in the United States without a special license from the Treasury Department.
Several people commented that, no, it was the selling of alcohol that was illegal without a license.
Y'all are wrong. Guys, it's my job to know this stuff. I've taken a half-dozen courses that have covered the history of distillation worldwide, including the legal issues thereof.
Now, where y'all are RIGHT is that there's no REASON for home distillation of small amounts of alcohol to be illegal. Nonetheless, in the United States, it is.
Why?
Well, you can partially blame George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Remember the Whiskey Rebellion from history class? That's when this started. 1790.
An excise tax on the distillation of whiskey was instituted, ostensibly, and primarily, as a way to pay off the debt incurred through the Revolutionary War -- but there were a few other reasons, as well. Hamilton also wanted to discourage distillation, as a temperance-type thing -- putting a "sin tax" on liquor in order to encourage wine and beer over hard spirits.
And there was one other effect. Hamilton wanted the Federal government to print and circulate money -- he was behind the United States Mint, and the first centralized bank of the United States.
And, for decades, farmers in the western parts of Virginia and the Carolinas had been taking their excess grain and making into whiskey -- and using the whiskey as currency. Obviously, you could drink whiskey -- but you could also simply use it as a means of exchange. And, if Hamilton wanted a centralized, Federal monetary system, he had to stamp out all competing systems. And distillation was one of them.
So the tax was set up, not on the SALE of liquor, but on its MANUFACTURE. Its intent, both as a sin tax and as a way to eliminate a competing currency, was to impede the independent PRODUCTION of spirits.
In fact, the tax was set up in a two-tier framework. If you made UNDER a certain number of gallons of spirit a year, you paid per gallon. Over that amount, you paid a flat fee, which would be significantly cheaper. This was intended to support industrial production at the expense of independent, home production.
And, just for the record? The cutoff to get into the cheaper bracket?
Pretty much exactly the yearly output of Washington's personal operation.
So, that's why, to this day, there is no legal small-scale home distillation in the United States. The taxes on production are DESIGNED to be prohibitive for personal production, in order to support large producers.
Several people commented that, no, it was the selling of alcohol that was illegal without a license.
Y'all are wrong. Guys, it's my job to know this stuff. I've taken a half-dozen courses that have covered the history of distillation worldwide, including the legal issues thereof.
Now, where y'all are RIGHT is that there's no REASON for home distillation of small amounts of alcohol to be illegal. Nonetheless, in the United States, it is.
Why?
Well, you can partially blame George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Remember the Whiskey Rebellion from history class? That's when this started. 1790.
An excise tax on the distillation of whiskey was instituted, ostensibly, and primarily, as a way to pay off the debt incurred through the Revolutionary War -- but there were a few other reasons, as well. Hamilton also wanted to discourage distillation, as a temperance-type thing -- putting a "sin tax" on liquor in order to encourage wine and beer over hard spirits.
And there was one other effect. Hamilton wanted the Federal government to print and circulate money -- he was behind the United States Mint, and the first centralized bank of the United States.
And, for decades, farmers in the western parts of Virginia and the Carolinas had been taking their excess grain and making into whiskey -- and using the whiskey as currency. Obviously, you could drink whiskey -- but you could also simply use it as a means of exchange. And, if Hamilton wanted a centralized, Federal monetary system, he had to stamp out all competing systems. And distillation was one of them.
So the tax was set up, not on the SALE of liquor, but on its MANUFACTURE. Its intent, both as a sin tax and as a way to eliminate a competing currency, was to impede the independent PRODUCTION of spirits.
In fact, the tax was set up in a two-tier framework. If you made UNDER a certain number of gallons of spirit a year, you paid per gallon. Over that amount, you paid a flat fee, which would be significantly cheaper. This was intended to support industrial production at the expense of independent, home production.
And, just for the record? The cutoff to get into the cheaper bracket?
Pretty much exactly the yearly output of Washington's personal operation.
So, that's why, to this day, there is no legal small-scale home distillation in the United States. The taxes on production are DESIGNED to be prohibitive for personal production, in order to support large producers.