Just got back from the liquor store. Their 1.75 bottle of Maker’s Mark is $45 and change. The liquor store guy says that the state gets 27.5% tax on whiskey here - and that each state is ‘different’ on taxes. Somehow or other all the liquor has to come thru the state ABC. From their website:
Thanks for the replies, everyone!
Tennessee has privately owned liquor stores, however, the prices at these stores are almost the same across the board because of how liquor is distributed. By law, the state is divided up into a number of regions, each of which is served by one (and only one) liquor distributor. This liquor distributor is the only source by which the store receives liquor. The distributor sets the price, which almost amounts to price-fixing. So, if the distributor jacks the wholesale price by $10 on the bottle, the store owners pretty much have to up their retail by $10, too, because they have nowhere else to buy liquor. It’s a crazy system if you ask me, but no one seems to be much interested in changing it, probably due to the vast amounts of cash spread around in the legislature by the lobbyists for the liquor distributors.
Yeah, that’s what I said when he pulled that line. It reminded me of the time a gas price hike was blamed on Hurricane Rita, when that hurricane wasn’t going to make landfall for another three days. :rolleyes: