Liquor enforcement tax collections provide insight into the economic impact of hosting NCAA basketball tournament games in Wichita.
In Kansas, a tax is collected at liquor stores, grocery stores, and convenience stores on the sale of alcoholic beverages. The same tax is also collected on sales to clubs, drinking establishments, and caterers by distributors. 1 This tax is called the liquor enforcement tax. The rate has been 8 percent since 1983, when it was raised from 4 percent. 2
This tax provides some insight into the level of sales of alcoholic beverages at bars, clubs, and restaurants. It is not a perfect measurement of that, and perhaps not even a very good measurement, as it also includes sales at retail outlets for consumption offsite.
Nonetheless, it’s data we have. The Kansas Department of Revenue provides this data on a monthly basis for each county. With the touted influx of visitors for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament games in Wichita in May — along with the generalized party atmosphere — we might to expect to see these tax collections rise during March. Here’s what happened.
The liquor tax collections exhibit pronounced seasonality, so it’s useful to compare the same month of the previous year, as follows for Sedgwick County:
March 2017: $1,315,653
March 2018: $1,085,214
Change: -$230,439, a decline of 17.5 percent.
Not only was March 2018 lower than March 2017, it was lower than five of the previous six months of March.
The monthly average for the 12 months prior to March 2018 was $1,243,793. March 2018 didn’t meet that standard.
Kansas liquor enforcement tax collections are available in an interactive visualization here.
—
Notes
- “Liquor Enforcement or Sales Tax. The second level of taxation is the enforcement or sales tax, which is imposed on the gross receipts from the sale of liquor or CMB to consumers by retail liquor dealers and grocery and convenience stores; and to clubs, drinking establishments, and caterers by distributors.”
Also: “Enforcement. Enforcement tax is an in-lieu-of sales tax imposed at the rate of 8 percent on the gross receipts of the sale of liquor to consumers and on the gross receipts from the sale of liquor and CMB to clubs, drinking establishments, and caterers by distributors.
A consumer purchasing a $10 bottle of wine at a liquor store is going to pay 80 cents in enforcement tax.
The club owner buying the case of light wine (who already had paid the 30 cents per gallon gallonage tax as part of his acquisition cost) also now would pay the 8 percent enforcement tax.”
Kansas Legislative Research Department. Kansas Legislator Briefing Book 2017. Available at http://www.kslegresearch.org/KLRD-web/Publications/BriefingBook/2017Briefs/J-4-LiquorTaxes.pdf. ↩ - Kansas Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association. A Brief Review of Alcoholic Beverages in Kansas. Available at http://www.kwswa.org/KSBeverageAlcoholHistory.pdf. ↩