The “bourbon boom” may have netted the commonwealth hundreds of millions in new investment in recent years, Kentucky Distillers’ Association president Eric Gregory warns Kentucky isn’t the only state capitalizing on the phenomenon.
While Kentucky still produces 95 percent of the world’s bourbon and remains synonymous with the spirit, distilleries are now popping up in every state. Speaking with KET’s Bill Goodman this week, Gregory said that’s a dramatic shift from just ten years ago and laws, including holdovers from the Prohibition era, are holding Kentucky back.
"What other states are doing... not only are their taxes lower than Kentucky, but they're providing more privileges we'll call them to distilleries to attract them there," Gregory said. "So they'll let distilleries do things like sell by the drink or you can go in and buy a case of their products and take them back to your friends or use them as Christmas presents or something like that, and in Kentucky we're prohibited from doing a lot of those things."
Gregory and company will take that case to the General Assembly next year, along with requests for scaled back taxes. With an incoming governor who has promised to roll back what he views as excessive government regulation and taxing, the argument could find a more receptive audience in 2016.
The production and consumption of spirits brings in more than $166 million dollars in taxes for Kentucky’s state and local governments – and lowered taxes could eat into that total unless lawmakers find other sources of revenue to make up the difference.
