Wine duty ‘disproportionately penalises’ women

02-Mar-2020 - Last updated on 02-Mar-2020 at 15:37 GMT

Grape expectations: Wine Drinkers UK is calling on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to stop singling wine out in Budget tax rises

Duty decisions focusing on beer is having an “unfair” impact on wine drinkers, thereby hitting its main consumer, women, harder than it does men, new insight shows.

Despite its widespread popularity across all social groups, wine has been unfavoured by governments next to its rival, beer, in regard to tax duty.

Taxes on wine in the past decade have increased nearly 40%, outstripping the increases on beer that have risen by 16%, as well as cider and spirits rising 27%, according to a survey by YouGov.

But despite these duty hikes, a different YouGov survey showed that wine was still the UK’s favourite alcoholic drink, enjoyed by around 33m people.

Research also stated that, in the past 12 months, wine was drunk by 81% of people, beating both beer (79%) and spirits (79%) to the top spot.

Total misconception

A study of 2,000 adults, commissioned by Wine Drinkers UK, revealed 39% of women list wine as their favourite alcoholic drink and among men, the order is reversed with 40% preferring beer and 16% preferring wine.

This thereby shows how the biased treatment of duty decisions on beer is impacting women more than it does men.

Therefore, Wine Drinkers UK is calling on Chancellor to stop singling wine out for “unfair treatment” ahead of the 11 March Budget.

Wine expert Joe Fattorini said: “Clearly, all social groups are suffering from the fact that duty on wine has risen over twice as fast as beer over the past 10 years. One group is being disproportionately penalised though, and it’s not the wealthy – it’s women.”

Fattorini argues that wine duty rises being politically safe when compared with beer is a “total misconception”.

“Whether conscious or unconscious, our politicians have been favouring men over women, and it’s now high time to put an end to that.”