UK beer tax and tax yield 1930 - 1939

As promised, some numbers to go with yesterday's post.

I started collecting statistics years ago, long before this blog kicked off. It was a lot of effort for no particular direct return. Longterm, it's a totally different matter. I'm so glad I put the work in because I have most of the numbers I need to hand. Like this set.

A couple of notes. The tax in 1930 and 1934 - 1939 wasn't really 80 shillings a barrel. It was 100/- per standard barrel with a 20/- rebate per bulk barrel. Which meant that the tax was effectively higher the stronger the beer. For example, a barrel of 1027.5º (half standard gravity) would be 50/- minus 20/- making the tax 30/-. While a beer at the standard gravity of 1055º would be 100/- minus 20/- leaving tax of 80/-. You can see that the stronger beer paid more than double the tax of the weaker beer.

The average tax per pint I've calcutated in a very simple way: by dividing the total tax collected by the number of pints brewed.

UK beer tax and tax yield 1930 - 1939
Year	Total Tax £	Bulk Barrels	Std. Barrels	Tax/Std. Brl	Av. sg	tax pint
1930	71,254,674	25,061,956	19,550,867	80s	1042.9	2.37d
1931	69,269,299	23,900,213	18,488,400	114s	1042.54	2.42d
1932	68,710,020	20,790,812	15,514,209	114s	1041.04	2.75d
1933	67,097,581	17,950,303	12,658,324	114s	1039.52	3.11d
1934	53,884,405	20,182,308	15,043,120	80s	1040.99	2.22d
1935	53,582,335	20,864,814	15,577,836	80s	1041.06	2.14d
1936	55,451,926	21,969,763	16,386,985	80s	1041.02	2.10d
1937	57,318,585	22,724,450	16,985,231	80s	1041.1	2.10d
1938	61,241,404	24,205,631	18,055,539	80s	1041.02	2.11d
1939	62,370,034	24,674,992	18,364,156	80s	1040.93	2.11d
Sources:
1928 Brewers' Almanack
1955 Brewers' Almanack

You can see that Sir Edgar Sanders was correct when he said that the tax on a pint of beer was 3d a pint in 1933. Though the tax yield was even lower that £74,000,000 and didn't even reach £70 million. The amount of tax collected only got back to the level of 1931 in 1940, after extra wartime taxation had been levied.