# What's The Law.



## Brewing_Brad (17/6/10)

G'day all,

Just a quick one, but does anyone know what the actual piece of legislation is called that governs the legality of home brewing? 

The only useful bit of information I can find is the following quote:



> Home brewing was legalised in Australia under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's Labor government in 1973 – in fact, the home-brew law was one of the very first among a raft of new legislation introduced by the highly reformist regime. Before that, it had been legal to make beer at home but only if it was around 1 per cent alcohol (in other words, gnat's bladder weak).
> 
> The exact wording of the new law introduced under Whitlam allows home brewers to make 22 litres of beer per week. Of course, that's more than enough for any individual to consume but, really, this is only a guideline and I don't know of anyone who has ever been prosecuted for making more than the allowable volume.



Cheers
Brad


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## tavas (17/6/10)

I have a homebrew book which says (very big paraphrase) "illegal to make more than 2% alcohol at home, but changed in the 70's". Basically what you have is true, i think it got too much for the "politiburo" to check everyone who was homebrewing.
I shall have to dig up the book, but for an actual quote or reference I don't have.


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## Brewing_Brad (17/6/10)

tavas said:


> I shall have to dig up the book, but for an actual quote or reference I don't have.



I just need the name of the legislation, eg: "Homebrew Act of 1973" or whatever. I've been scouring every government website I can find but without knowing the name, I'm running blind.


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## unrealeous (17/6/10)

Brewing_Brad said:


> I just need the name of the legislation, eg: "Homebrew Act of 1973" or whatever. I've been scouring every government website I can find but without knowing the name, I'm running blind.



http://www.dassa.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=124#production

*The Production and Distribution of Alcohol *
Under the Distillation Act 1901 (Cwlth) it is an offence to distil any spirit without first obtaining a licence from the Excise Business Line of the Australian Taxation Office (maximum penalty $5000).
It is also an offence to make, possess, sell or purchase any illicit spirits regardless of the proposed use (maximum penalty $5000).
The production of beer or wine without a licence is not an offence provided the production is not for commercial purposes, as specified by the Excise Tariff Act 1921 (Cwlth).
The production of fortified wine requires a permit from the Excise Business Line of the Australian Taxation Office. Permits are only granted for commercial purposes.
Under the Customs Act 1901 (Cwlth) an individual is permitted to bring into the country 2.25 litres of alcoholic liquor (including wine, beer, or spirit) per person aged 18 years or over, before import duty is charged.


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## Brewing_Brad (17/6/10)

unrealeous said:


> The production of beer or wine without a licence is not an offence provided the production is not for commercial purposes, as specified by the Excise Tariff Act 1921 (Cwlth).



Thanks unrealeous! You're a legend!


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## Pennywise (17/6/10)

Funny how we're only allowed to make 22 litres a week but the standard k&k recipe is for 23 litres <_<


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## Brewing_Brad (17/6/10)

Homebrewer79 said:


> Funny how we're only allowed to make 22 litres a week but the standard k&k recipe is for 23 litres <_<



Well, I couldn't find any reference to a limit on how much you can brew, just as long as you don't try to sell it. So I'm thinking my next batch will be a Kilolitre. That should last me a week or two.


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## Maple (17/6/10)

Brewing_Brad said:


> ... So I'm thinking my next batch will be a Kilolitre. That should last me a week or two.


Holy heck, how big is your kettle?


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## Brewing_Brad (17/6/10)

Maple said:


> Holy heck, how big is your kettle?



Ok, so I may have to do it in smaller batches...


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## Pennywise (17/6/10)

Good luck with that super concentrated boil :lol:


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## Phoney (17/6/10)

> The production of fortified wine requires a permit from the Excise Business Line of the Australian Taxation Office. Permits are only granted for commercial purposes.



So it's illegal to tip a bit of brandy into a bottle of wine?


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## Muggus (17/6/10)

phoneyhuh said:


> So it's illegal to tip a bit of brandy into a bottle of wine?


Haha apparently!

I think it my apply to using "grape spirit" to fortify wine. Grape spirit for wine making purposes has very little tax on it, so it is really cheap, but you have to keep very detailed logs on its purchase and use...that law is a bit a confusing in that regard.


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## 501 (17/6/10)

Hey, 
I scrawled for ages one time looking for this as well. 
seems the 1972 version of the excise tariff is no longer easy to find on comlaw. etc etc. 
the current acts definition of non-commercial doesn't seem to mention liters (afaik) So your 1000 liters prbly ain't `commercial`. 
Most straightforward is the ATO

If you scrawl the ato there are some interesting Determinations too, 
such as dextrose, malt extract and sugar packaged and labeled for brewing purposes. 
These were found Not GST exempt as they should be imo as the 'raw' food ingredients that they are. 
Issue 24 - Ingredients used for home brewing or wine making
any 'homebrew' stuff is taxed including cane sugar lol...

Also worrying is some feminist crap; can't find the original but it's here -= future tax submission vic health=- 
here's a boring quote. 
_Privately produced beer is beer made for personal use by private individuals and is exempt
from the payment of excise. The cost of this tax benefit is estimated by Treasury at $40
million for 2008-09. Whether beer is brewed for private purposes or not the effect of the
alcohol on the consumer is the same. There is no case for the consumer of home-brew to
be tax-preferred to the consumer of commercial brews. Alcohol is alcohol and like products
should be taxed alike. We assume the difficulty lies with the Tax Office trying to assess the
quantity brewed by each home-brewer and then trying to ensure compliance with the
excise. For practical reasons this concession may have to remain, but that should be stated
as the reason for the concession, not the preferment of one type of beer drinker over
another._​fkn crap hey. 
next would be sugar - yeast - honey taxes. 
<_<


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## Pennywise (17/6/10)

501 said:


> Most straightforward is the ATO




There's a centence I've never heard before :blink:


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## 501 (17/6/10)

Lol at my grammar 
:lol:


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## Dazza_devil (17/6/10)

The law is an ass.
It was the yeast that made it your honour.


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## Hatchy (17/6/10)

If we're only allowed to make 22L a week then why are 60L fermenters so readily available? To avoid breaking this law should I bottle half 1 week & the other half the week after?


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## Pennywise (17/6/10)

Distilling is illegal, but you can still buy stills (for other purposes  ). What's to say you have to use the 60L drum to ferment in? HB'ers are the only one's that call them fermenters. They're just drums to everyone else.


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## Pete2501 (17/6/10)

Judge Dread is the Law.


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## 501 (17/6/10)

I believe that 22 liter thing is from the Excise Act 1972. 
This appears to be superseded and hard to obtain a copy of. 

the only reference I can find is to non-commercial equipment - 
not classifications of commercial equipment (sizes etc), 
or any reference to specific amounts allowable for home brewing in the latest excise tariff acts. 

ato
h34r:


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## MarkBastard (17/6/10)

501 said:


> Also worrying is some feminist crap; can't find the original but it's here -= future tax submission vic health=-
> here's a boring quote.
> _Privately produced beer is beer made for personal use by private individuals and is exempt
> from the payment of excise. The cost of this tax benefit is estimated by Treasury at $40
> ...



KNOW YOUR ENEMY


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## Phoney (17/6/10)

As for distilling, it's complete crap that it's legal in NZ but not here. Although from what ive heard from friends over on the other side of the ditch, Kiwi land is fast becoming a nanny state too. Just the same as in the UK, bit by bit our rights are slowly being eroded away, nobody seems to give a shit and both of our main political parties are just as bad as each other. Even in the USA I suspect that if their govt tried to get away with half of the stuff that ours do, people would be rioting in the streets. These arseholes wont stop until the day comes in Australia when people must have their hands taped behind their backs and rubber mouth guards inserted in their mouths in order to appear in public because they could possibly cause harm to someone else. 

Even though I dont agree with more than half of their policies, i'll be voting LDP come next election. Hopefully they get just one senator in talk some sense into our politicians.

/rant.



Hatchy said:


> If we're only allowed to make 22L a week then why are 60L fermenters so readily available? To avoid breaking this law should I bottle half 1 week & the other half the week after?



I wonder if they would look at it in averages over say, a 12 month period?

ie: You might brew two 50L batches in one day but not brew again for a month.


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## Pete2501 (17/6/10)

I'm not making any money out of it. I don't sell it. I don't see the big deal.


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## bkmad (17/6/10)

Pete2501 said:


> I'm not making any money out of it. I don't sell it. I don't see the big deal.



Ahh, but the govt isn't making any money out of it, but they probably want to.


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## Pete2501 (17/6/10)

The government is there to look after the people. IF what I'm doing has little to no impact on those around me then I don't understand the reasoning. 

It's not like I'm buying crack and breaking into peoples houses to keep my addiction up. 

It's making something and I'm enjoying it


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## argon (17/6/10)

+1 on the only reason we have legislation is that the government can make money...not that you'll potentially make money.

Here's something i prepared earlier...in relation to us in Aus getting screwed over.. particularly in beer making.



argon said:


> Snip...
> 
> Why have 2 separate tax/excise structures based on the product being produced. All Australian manufacturers, distillers, brewers and distributors of alcoholic beverages not subject to wine equalisation tax have a responsibility under the Excise Tariff Act 1921 to pay excise duty. The Wine Equalisation Tax rate is 29% on across the board, regardless of ABV. Whereas beer starts at 29.36% for ABV less than 3% up to 34.22% above 3.5% ABV. It might seem small amounts but when you consider that the ATO took $1.7 billion from beer excise in 02-03 the money stacks up.
> 
> ...


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## cdbrown (17/6/10)

bkmad said:


> Ahh, but the govt isn't making any money out of it, but they probably want to.



They get GST on some of the stuff.


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## Phoney (17/6/10)

Pete2501 said:


> The government is there to look after the people. IF what I'm doing has little to no impact on those around me then I don't understand the reasoning.




Governments are not your friend. Giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to schoolboys.


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## bkmad (17/6/10)

cdbrown said:


> They get GST on some of the stuff.


My comment was a bit of a throwaway comment, but what I was getting at is that they would obviously love to charge us excise as well. The article earlier in this threat alluded to the govt 'losing' 40 million due to missing out on excise on homebrewers. That number seems bullshit to me as well as the reasoning behind it. Using that reasoning, the govt are also missing out on millions by not putting an excise on crossing the road or a cheese excise.


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## earle (17/6/10)

IIRC it is prohibited to brew in a rental property. Has anyone heard of this before?


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## tcraig20 (17/6/10)

501 said:


> next would be sugar - yeast - honey taxes.
> <_<



Been there, done that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthouse#Malt_tax

Apparently it went out of fashion back when we were still hanging highwaymen.

BTW: Am I the only one who finds it interesting that we are ferretting around for a piece of legislation that gives us permission to do something?


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## roller997 (17/6/10)

Not sure if the $40Mil is an accurate estimate, however......

From past research, 1 liter of 5% beer has close to $1.80 of excise on it if sold in >48 liter kegs. Smaller kegs / bottles etc attract more excise but I can't remember how much. Considering that a lot of folks use 23 liter fermenters, it is likely that the excise will be more than $1.8 per liter.

Using $1.8 per liter $40,000,000 is 22,222,222 liters of beer per annum.
It would take 1 in 100 Australien residents homebrews, to brew an average of five * 23 liter batches each year to amount to the $40Mil in excise. 

I do suspect that with the bureaucratic overheads, the cost of collecting this excise would be quite a bit more than the money they would collect.


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## MarkBastard (17/6/10)

phoneyhuh said:


> bit by bit our rights are slowly being eroded away, nobody seems to give a shit and both of our main political parties are just as bad as each other.



Couldn't agree more. Look how much people care about that god damn super mining tax, yet no one is up in arms about the civil-liberties erosion that is occurring at the same time. 

It's sickening. People in this country treat political parties like they're football teams.


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## Dazza_devil (17/6/10)

earle said:


> IIRC it is prohibited to brew in a rental property. Has anyone heard of this before?




Can't be. The cops searched my place recently, taking an interest in my fermenter and set-up but that was all. Apart from asking if I was brewing anything other than beer they weren't fussed. They was keen to find something too but came up empty handed :lol: 
There was 6 of them but only half a brain between them.


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## MarkBastard (17/6/10)

Roller997 said:


> I do suspect that with the bureaucratic overheads, the cost of collecting this excise would be quite a bit more than the money they would collect.



There is NO way those pricks would be getting any of my money from my own home brew. I don't care if it's illegal or not.


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## Dazza_devil (17/6/10)

Mark^Bastard said:


> There is NO way those pricks would be getting any of my money from my own home brew. I don't care if it's illegal or not.




It'd probably work out to be more profitable to fine us for making it or having over a certain amount than taxing it in anyway.
I reckon it may be prudent to put some yeasties in a vault just in case though.
The yeast is the culprit after all.


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## 501 (17/6/10)

I'd be more worried than that the way they would do it ; 
with 500% taxes on anything remotely homebrew. 
I know hard to implement. 



Roller997 said:


> Using $1.8 per liter $40,000,000 is 22,222,222 liters of beer per annum.
> It would take 1 in 100 Australien residents homebrews, to brew an average of five * 23 liter batches each year to amount to the $40Mil in excise.


I agree with you on $40 mil guess they just pulled it out their a....s. 

$1.80 a liter I get slightly lower purely for the excise. 
Rates are here from tariff act schedule

1.1.6 is for microbrews, samples etc (guessing) and is only 2.58 per liter of alcohol above the 1.15% content. 
but if they charged us at the commercial rate it would be 36.98 per liter of alc or 26.03 in larger kegs ..... 

#excise only calcs:- 
23 liters @ 5% minus the Allowable 1.15% alc = 3.85% * 23 liters = 0.8855 liters alcohol
0.8855 liters * 36.98 = $32.74579 (about $1.40 per liter / ~ 53cents per stubbie) 

1 brew per week * 52 weeks == $1702.78 per person per year. (and that ain't much beer?)
+ gst + whatever else

$40000000/the above = 23490 brewers. (No idea how many of us there are). 
My dodgy maths it would take 1 in 1000 citizens brewing 23 liters per week to hit the 40mill ?

-=I'm drinking some excise-exempt items now so forgive dodgy maths etc if applicable=- 

Guessing that they're accounting for lost wages, 
other taxes etc gained along the way.


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## manticle (17/6/10)

501 said:


> Also worrying is some feminist crap; can't find the original but it's here -= future tax submission vic health=-
> here's a boring quote.
> _Privately produced beer is beer made for personal use by private individuals and is exempt
> from the payment of excise. The cost of this tax benefit is estimated by Treasury at $40
> ...




While I agree that suggestion is a big load of horseshite I'm having trouble seeing the relevance to feminism. Was it written by Catherine McKinnon?


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## mika (17/6/10)

Pete2501 said:


> The government is there to look after the people. IF what I'm doing has little to no impact on those around me then I don't understand the reasoning.
> 
> .............



You say that, but playing devils advocate. They're now advertising on the TV that beer can cause cancer now (what doesn't ?)
And the problems associated with excessive (binge) drinking is well documented.
So it would not suprise me that in their 'cost of home brewing' sums, they're including a cost to the tax payer for the hospital bed that you'll use in later life due to the health complications caused by the 'evil drink'.

Nanny state ? .... we've only just seen the tip of the iceberg.


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## 501 (17/6/10)

manticle said:


> While I agree that suggestion is a big load of horseshite I'm having trouble seeing the relevance to feminism. Was it written my Catherine McKinnon?


Yes I agree that is not the correct term, no offence was meant by that.


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## manticle (17/6/10)

Not offended - just found it odd.

I'd prefer wet blanket, interfering, bureaucratic, busy body doo gooder tosspots myself.


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## Phoney (17/6/10)

The only reason as to why the government isnt charging us homebrewers excise is not that they dont want a slice of our money, it's as pointed out earlier - that it would be impossible for them to enforce. 

Given how difficult they're finding the job of preventing people from growing certain plants in their backyards is, what hope do they have against us? It's the same reason that they dont charge excise on people who make their own bio-diesel from fish'n'chip shop grease in their backyards.



manticle said:


> While I agree that suggestion is a big load of horseshite I'm having trouble seeing the relevance to feminism. Was it written by Catherine McKinnon?








(circa 1920's prohibition era America)


Slightly :icon_offtopic: But look at these sour bitches. I wouldn't want to touch any of them either :lol:


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## Pennywise (17/6/10)

They can have their f**kin licquor. F**k that I'd rather do my dog & brew

Edit: the bitch straight under the sign looks like a fuckin' bloke mate. not nearly as good lookin as my dog though :lol:


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## MHB (17/6/10)

This thread is wondering just a touch off topic
Might be advisable to exercise just a touch of restraint with some of our comments guys

For anyone interested this is how beer excise is calculated ATO Excise working example, here is the Excise table of rates.
Please note that there is an exemption on the first 1.5% of alcohol content this is compensation for the GST, as you can't tax a tax so to speak.

Home Brew has since its legalisation been estimated at close to 2% of total beer production in Australia, if you want to speculate on how much tax is forgone, that might help you work out a more realistic number.

MHB


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## ekul (17/6/10)

I read somewhere (i think it was john palmers book but i may be wrong) that homebrewing above 2% alc was made legal so that commercial beer could be taxed at a higher rate. The reasoning was that because people could avoid paying the higher tax by making their own beer then it wasn't an 'unfair' tax. I remember reading that homebrew beer at this time wasn't an alternative to anything besides dirty brown vomit water so the government didn't lose many of its 'customers' to homebrew. Pretty sneaky really. This is all from memory and the author may have been speculating so whether its true or not is a mystery to me.

Anyway, if the above is true then it would be a pretty dog act to turn around years later after everybody (except me and whoever wrote the book i read  ) and start charging tax on homebrew. If you count your time at even $10/hr its already cheaper to buy commercial beer, but having tax on top would be really shit.

How recent is the information? Pollies talk shit all the time and nothing happens, they generally say whatever they are thinking at the time and don't act on it, or do the opposite. So maybe the government will start paying us to make beer?


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## avaneyk (17/6/10)

MHB said:


> Please note that there is an exemption on the first 1.5% of alcohol content this is compensation for the GST, as you can't tax a tax so to speak.



Hmmm...they don't have a problem charging gst on fuel excise... <_<


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## Pennywise (17/6/10)

Completely :icon_offtopic:
Actually, the thing under the sign looks like Rowen Aktinson in a strange but funny pose for some scene out of Black Adder


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## spog (17/6/10)

yep,couldt agree more, what next a tax on rain water tanks, a tax on home grown vaggies.[ i meant to say veggies but this computer wont let me delet bugga all...ahh.bugga it you get the idea.............the vaggie will now haunght me..........cheers...spug...err..spag.umm.spig....aahhh sprog...err nope..spog.....cheers.....


Pete2501 said:


> I'm not making any money out of it. I don't sell it. I don't see the big deal.


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## Brewing_Brad (18/6/10)

JamesCraig said:


> BTW: Am I the only one who finds it interesting that we are ferretting around for a piece of legislation that gives us permission to do something?



The only reason I brought it up is because I'm a nerd and I like to know things like this


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