I do not have anything against beer. I am saying that the middle class consumes beer. I asked why the middle class would be taxed on beer. What are the Liberals doing with the tax on beer? They are raising the tax on beer. This is the government that continually says it needs to stand up for the middle class. I made the argument that the middle class drinks beer. Why is the government raising the taxes on beer?
It goes on from there. The middle class drinks beer and understands that taxes are being raised, but then the Liberals come up with a formula for how they are going to tax beer. Believe me, it is quite a doozy. The formula is A x B x C = the tax that has to be paid on beer.
Why would there need to be a difference in the tax rate between beer and wine? It seems to me that there would be a fairly simple way of taxing beer and wine, if we need to tax beer and wine. It would seem that the product of concern we are trying to tax is the alcohol. Every bottle of beer I have ever bought says right on it 0.5%, 5%, or 7% alcohol. It seems to me that it would be fairly easy to figure out the volume of alcohol, and we would have a standard rate. For a volume of alcohol, this is how much tax there would be.
However, no, the minister must get involved to determine what kind of beer we are dealing with or what the percentage is. Therefore, in the equation I mentioned earlier, A x B x C, A is for the quantity and litres of beer concentrate, and B is the particular method by which the beer is diluted, as approved by the minister. This is very interesting to me.
Why does the minister need to approve the production of beer on a particular case? Why would that manipulate the changes in the rate of tax that a particular beer company pays? Perhaps it is because one of those numbered companies that we continue to ask about may actually be a beer brewing company. That would be why the minister has to get involved in beer production. He needs to ensure that his beer company does not have to pay as much tax.