MODIFICATION OF VOLSTEAD ACT

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1932

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS, Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., Hon. James W. Collier (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

Gentlemen of the committee, we have assembled here to hold hearings on H. R. 13312, being a bill to provide revenue by the taxation of certain nonintoxicating liquor, and for other purposes.

Before we go into the hearings, I want to make a brief statement. The bill provides for a tax of $5 a barrel on all beer, lager beer, ale, porter, and other similar fermented liquor, of not more than 2.75 per cent of alcohol by weight. Both of those figures are arbitrary and were put in by the author of the bill in order that we might have something before us. The purpose of this hearing is to determine the tax and the alcoholic content, which, of course, will be determined by a committee of 25 and not by the author of the bill.

I want to emphasize that fact, that both the alcoholic content by weight and the tax are purely arbitrary figures, put in there in order to complete the bill.

At this point I will ask that the bill be inserted in the hearings. (The bill is as follows:)

[H. R. 13312, Seventy-second Congress, second session]

A BILL To provide revenue by the taxation of certain nonintoxicating liquor, and for other purposes Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there shall be levied and collected on all beer, lager beer, ale, porter, and other similar fermented liquor, containing onehalf of 1 per centum or more of alcohol by volume, and not more than 2.75 per centum of alcohol by weight, brewed or manufactured and, after the effective date of this act, sold, or removed for consumption or sale, within the United States, by whatever name such liquors may be called, in lieu of the internalrevenue tax imposed thereon by section 608 of the revenue act of 1918, a tax of $5 for every barrel containing not more than thirty-one gallons, and at a like rate for any other quantity or for the fractional parts of a barrel authorized and defined by law, to be collected under the provisions of existing law. Nothing in this section shall in any manner affect the internal-revenue tax on beer, lager beer, ale, porter, or other similar fermented liquor, containing more than 2.75 per centum of alcohol by weight, or less than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume.

SEC. 2. Wherever used in the national prohibition act, as amended and supplemented, the following terms shall, so far as relating to beer, ale, porter, or similar fermented liquor, have the following meanings:

(1) The term "one-half of 1 per centum or more of alcohol by volume" shall mean “more than 2.75 per centum of alcohol by weight."

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