BILL NUMBER:S1909

TITLE OF BILL:
An act
to amend the tax law, in relation to eliminating the wholesaler's
reporting requirement for farm and commercial wineries

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
The bill amends a reporting requirement for wholesalers, adopted as
part of the 2009-10 state budget, that requires greater reporting of
sales of alcoholic beverages to the Department of Taxation and
Finance for the purposes of collecting data for tax compliance
enforcement. This proposal seeks to amend the reporting requirement
to exclude New York's farm, micro, and commercially licensed
wineries.

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Amends Tax law to specifically exclude New York's farm, commercial,
and micro wineries from reporting on a quarterly basis each retailer
whom the winery has made a sale to, including the retailers or
operators state liquor authority license number and the total value
of the sales.

EXISTING LAW:
Under current law, every person licensed as a wholesaler must report
to the Department of Taxation and Finance. Since many of New York's
              

wineries are also licensed as wholesalers so that they can engage in
sales of their products to restaurants and liquor stores, the
reporting requirement has folded in New York's small businesses as
well as the typically larger wholesaler licensees.

JUSTIFICATION:
New York's farm and commercial wineries are primarily small businesses.
One of New York's wineries estimated that he spent 100 hours alone
trying to design, implement, and collect forms signed by all of his
restaurant accounts for sales amounting to a small volume of cases of
wine. Because this data must be collected quarterly, and he sells an
average of 3 or 4 cases a wine a year to his accounts, collection of
these forms has become such a nuisance both to the winery owner and
the restaurants that even those small sales are being jeopardized. As
f:lrm and commercial winery owners, New York's farmers would rather
be devoting their time in the vineyards or in the winemaking process
than in filing unnecessary paperwork with the State of New York. The
reporting requirement adds an additional regulatory burden on New
York's farm business community that is
simply not appropriate if the goal of the state is to encourage
economic development. Tax compliance will continue to be achieved as
nothing in the legislation would remove the authority of the
Department of Tax and Finance to continue to audit both farm,
commercial and micro wineries for tax compliance. In addition, New
York's larger wineries that are well represented in the wholesale
chain would have their sales reported for them by their wholesaler,
who has the compliance and paperwork staff to deal with the
reporting requirement.

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:


S.8144 of 2009.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
None.

LOCAL FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
None.

EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act takes effect immediately.