The government proposed increasing excise tax rates on wine from 2020: on still wines - from 18 to 31 rubles. for 1 liter, for sparkling wines - from 36 to 40 rubles. for 1 liter, follows from the draft amendments to the Tax Code, which Vedomosti reviewed. The Prime Minister's press secretary Oleg Osipov confirmed that the government has approved such amendments and will soon submit them to the State Duma.

The size of the rates was determined “based on the need to align excise tax rates on various alcohol with comparable alcohol content, equal to the degree of harmfulness of the product,” explains a representative of the Ministry of Finance, without specifying the details of the calculations.

Wine trading companies do not agree with this increase. For still wines, the increase in excise tax is significant - this will increase the price for the end consumer, warns Irina Fomina, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the wine trading company MBG-Millennium. To reduce the negative impact on the market, the rate on still wine should be simultaneously increased to 20 rubles. for 1 liter with a subsequent increase by 1 rub. per year, says Maxim Kashirin, president of Simple Group, the country's largest wine importer. At the same time, the maximum excise tax rate in the future should not exceed 25 rubles. for 1 liter is the maximum possible rate to maintain demand for inexpensive Russian and imported products, he believes. It is important to maintain the availability of high-quality, inexpensive wine so that the mass consumer switches to it from other alcohol, for example, vodka, adds Kashirin. Veniamin Grabar, president of the Ladoga company, agrees with this: due to rising prices for wine, consumers will pay more attention to stronger and less harmless drinks.

Grabar is against any increase in excise taxes on alcohol - the share of counterfeit goods has already been reduced to the maximum, and an increase in excise taxes will again lead to its increase. This is especially harmful for wine: the wine market is now only in its infancy and any significant regulatory measure could interfere with this, he believes.

Even the current excise tax rate for sparkling wines is 36 rubles. is already high - in 2017 it increased by 10 rubles at once, and it is not advisable to raise it further, believes Magomed Talaev, chairman of the board of directors of the Moscow Champagne Wine Factory. The share of taxes in the cost of a bottle of champagne is already high - about 37%; a further increase will worsen the situation for champagne producers and increase retail prices, he warns. In addition, it is not clear why champagne producers should pay a higher excise tax than producers of still wines; champagne production technology is more complex and more expensive, he says.

However, a significant increase in excise tax will not affect all wines. On the one hand, the amendments eliminate the inconsistency of Russian legislation with WTO standards: rates on Russian and imported wines are equalized.

On the other hand, grapes used for the production of wine, wine materials or full-cycle alcoholic beverages will be classified as excisable products, and producers of these products will be able to receive an excise tax deduction for used grapes with an increasing coefficient, says a representative of the Ministry of Finance. This will support Russian winemakers, explains the federal official. Producers of wine from Russian grapes will receive benefits, and producers of wine from imported wine materials and importers will pay excise tax at the full rate, the President of the Union of Winegrowers and Winemakers Leonid Popovich is pleased.

Such a benefit will stimulate the planting of vineyards and a reduction in imports, Popovich believes. Now the area of vineyards in Russia exceeds 95,000 hectares; in 2018, almost 7,000 hectares were planted, he recalls. At the same time, in 2018, Russia imported 11.6 million dal of wine materials, the main suppliers being Spain, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Uruguay, according to the Federal Customs Service.

The amendments contain one more innovation: now the excise tax rates on wine drinks without added alcohol (consists of at least 50% wine with the addition of water, sugar-containing products, flavorings, etc.) are equal to the excise taxes on wine: for carbonated drinks the rate is 40 rubles. , for non-carbonated – 31 rub. Now there is a single excise tax rate for them - 18 rubles. This will eliminate the unreasonable competitive advantage of wine drinks over higher-quality sparkling wines, a representative of the Ministry of Finance believes. Such a measure will really make it possible to equalize the position of producers of champagne and competing carbonated drinks, the costs of which are lower, and there is also no minimum retail price, says Talaev. These drinks are presented in the same way as real champagne, but are cheaper, as a result, consumers are increasingly choosing such drinks, he adds.

After the excise tax increase, the price of wine drinks will rise almost to the level of natural wines, says Vadim Drobiz, director of the analytical agency CIFRRA. The result, in his opinion, will be this: a small part of people will switch from drinks to wine, but the majority will switch to illegal wine drinks, which will appear after the increase in excise taxes. They can now be bought for 90–100 rubles, and they look and taste no different from wine. After the appearance of the “wine drink” category in 2012, counterfeit products migrated into it: now there are 8 million decaliters of carbonated wine drinks and 15 million decaliters of non-carbonated ones, Drobiz cites statistics.

Wine prices will rise in Russia