California Wine Industry to Benefit from Republican Tax Bill

The tax reform bill, which passed on Tuesday and Wednesday, has a number of unheralded benefits — including tax credits for large wineries, brewers, and distillers in California.

“It’s good for the industry, as well as for the state of California,” Margie Healy, a spokeswoman for F. Korbel and Bros., told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Everyone stands to gain.”

According to the Chronicle, the bill,which would go into affect January 1, 2018, “would create a tax credit for wineries of $1 per gallon for the first 30,000 wine gallons produced, 90 cents per gallon for the next 100,000 wine gallons produced, and 53.5 cents per gallon for the next 620,000 gallons produced. Large wineries, those that produced more than 150,000 gallons per year, were formerly not eligible for the credit.”

The credit would reportedly last for two years. Congress would then need to vote on whether to continue the tax credit.

Ironically, the tax credit for the wine industry originally came from a separate piece of legislation that was co-sponsored by California Democrat Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) who voted against the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, as did every single member of the Democratic Party because they fear the bill “raises taxes on the middle class and adds $2.3 trillion to our already sky-high deficit.”

In addition to the Democrats, 12 Republicans also voted against the legislation. These lawmakers represent high-income states and their constituents will be most affected by the tax bill. The Republicans who voted against the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are Representatives Dan Donovan (R-NY), John Faso (R-NY), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Walter Jones (R-NC), Peter King (R-NY), Leonard Lance (R-NJ), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Christopher Smith (R-NJ), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), and Lee Zeldin (R-NY).

Duncan Hunter (R-CA) said he was voting in favor of the bill despite the fact that some of his constituents could suffer higher taxes as a result of the legislation.

“Why punish the rest of the nation because California is stupid?” Hunter said in an interview with KUSI. “It’s a tough vote for me, but I’m not gonna keep the economy down for the whole country because California has bad government.”

Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

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