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Here’s how much more you’ll pay for beer as new tax on breweries goes into effect today

Be ready to spend just a little bit more on your favorite beer at a brewery.

Pennsylvania is implementing a “use tax” on beer sold to consumers at breweries, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It’s not a sales tax, though. Instead the use tax revolves around a quarter of a brewery’s retail sales.

“The tax is imposed on the manufacturer for using its own products at its business,”Jeffrey Johnson, director of the Department of Revenue Communications, told the Post-Gazette.

Many breweries told the Post-Gazette that the tax, which takes effect today, will be passed on to the consumers.

In order to calculate the tax, you need to multiply a quarter of all retail sales by the local sales tax. In most of Pennsylvania that’s six percent, but in several counties that could be more. Allegheny, for instance, has a 7 percent sales tax while Philadelphia has an 8 percent one. Harrisburg, Lancaster and York all have a 6 percent sales tax.

Essentially that puts the new tax at 1.5 percent for most Pennsylvania breweries, the Post-Gazette reports. In Allegheny County it’s 1.7 percent and in Philadelphia it’s 2 percent.

READ MORE: Hershey and Yuengling create a limited-edition chocolate beer, because what could be better? Prior to this, breweries weren’t collecting any tax on retail sales in Pennsylvania. Breweries have argued that a sales tax wouldn’t be fair to them, as it would be four times more than restaurants and grocery stores pay -- since retailers pay it at wholesale prices. The use tax is an attempt to appease both sides and was signed into law on June 28.

So how much will this raise prices of beers for consumers? It’s looking like it’ll generally be increasing prices by less than a dollar. Jason Lavery of Lavery Brewing Company in Erie told the Post-Gazette that prices were going to be raised by 25 cents for a beer and $1 for cases.

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