HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) – It has been described as the local version of the Boston Tea Party with no drinks spilled into the Ohio River.
On Wednesday night, several Huntington bars and restaurants participated in an event known as the Support West Virginia Breweries Pub Crawl.
This week, Governor Jim Justice spoke about his proposal to phase out income taxes to attract people to the state. However, the reduction would be offset by the increase and expansion of a variety of other taxes.
“This is a plan to get rid of income tax in a very, very short time without harming or harming the government,” Justice said Monday.
Brewers fear that doing so would cause great damage to their growing industries.
The excise tax on a 31-gallon barrel in West Virginia is currently $ 5.50. The governor’s proposal would increase this to more than $ 29.
Alexander Durand is Sales and Marketing Director for Greenbrier Valley Brewing Company.
“We’re talking about increasing our brewery from $ 20,000 to $ 170,000 a year,” said Durand. “It’s a disadvantage for us to be able to hire more people and grow our business. It makes it so that we can’t compete with non-state brewers who come in. “
Drew Hetzer owns the peddler. He says he already has a lot of hassle with equipment, product costs, and labor at a brewery, and this change would make business so much more difficult.
“If that happened, we’d probably lose business in the sense that we’re trying to get people to drink local beer, get this local economy going, and all that would do is take a step back instead of going forward in the right direction, ”said Hetzer.
Their concerns could be alleviated by a new bill drawn up before pub crawling.
On Monday, the West Virginia House finance committee drafted its own bill to cut income taxes, but with annual cuts of $ 150 million instead of tax increases.
A virtual public hearing on the House’s draft law will take place on Thursday at 3 p.m.
When asked about the other version of the plan, Governor Justice said he was ready to negotiate.
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