Alcohol taxes in the United States, mapped

Alcoholic beverages are subject to special excise taxes in virtually every American state, but there's little policy rhyme or reason to how they vary.

Based on this map of taxes on distilled spirits, you'd think the Pacific Northwestern states were strong believers in paternalistic regulation of alcohol consumption:

Tax Foundation

But when it comes to beer taxes, they're in the middle of the pack, and it's the South that's looking to tax booze:

Tax Foundation

Overall, if you do a scatter plot of each state's rank in spirit tax level versus beer tax level, you find yourself gazing upon a sea of randomness:

Some of this can probably be chalked up to interest group politics. Tennessee is an important home to spirits manufacturing, so it taxes the pants off beer and goes easy on spirits. And some of it is likely political economy — very conservative Deep South states seem to enjoy relying on the heavily regressive beer tax over other kinds of revenue.

But mostly it looks like American legislators as a whole simply aren't all that thoughtful about how they are designing these taxes. The mere fact that taxes are levied on quantities of beer or spirits rather than on quantities of alcohol speaks to a failure to really consider the issues in a public health framework.

We're here to shed some clarity

One of our core beliefs here at Vox is that everyone needs and deserves access to the information that helps them understand the world, regardless of whether they can pay for a subscription. With the 2024 election on the horizon, more people are turning to us for clear and balanced explanations of the issues and policies at stake. We’re so grateful that we’re on track to hit 85,000 contributions to the Vox Contributions program before the end of the year, which in turn helps us keep this work free. We need to add 2,500 contributions this month to hit that goal. Will you make a contribution today to help us hit this goal and support our policy coverage? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via