Big changes to TTB regulations are continuing to gain congressional support, which is good news for U.S. wineries. These changes would mean substantial savings on TTB excise taxes.

The force behind this is the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act, a bill reintroduced into Congress in January of this year. In a discussion this April with Michael Kaiser, vice president of Wine America in Washington, D.C., he said the chances of this bill being passed on its own are very slim. Instead, it will likely be bundled into a much larger tax bill later this year. Should that bill make its way through Congress and be passed in 2017, the TTB would likely put the regulatory changes into effect starting in 2018.

These new regulations also would mean that wineries need to make some changes to their records as well as the two primary TTB reports: the Report of Wine Premise Operations (5120.17) and the excise tax report.

U.S. wineries would see changes in three primary areas: