Last orders for small brewers after EU tax changes

Poland's small breweries, which struggled in the past but somehow managed to survive, are no longer able to do so because tax compliance standards have become much more stringent following Poland's EU accession. Now all producers of goods on which excise tax is charged, including beer, need to have so-called tax warehouses, but in order to be allowed to run them, they need to have paid their taxes and social contributions on time in the past. In addition to this, opening of the warehouses frequently requires companies to put down so-called excise collateral amounting to sizeable sums of as much as zł.100,000 or more. Many of the smallest breweries, which have had trouble paying taxes in the past, could not meet those standards. One of them is the Grybów brewery in southern Poland, which was brewing beer since the reign of Austrian Emperor Franz Josef, won awards in Vienna in the 19th century, survived two World Wars, but could not survive EU regulations. (Gazeta Wyborcza, p.16) T.J.