Reportedly the new liquor policy of Telangana unveiled on Thursday has hiked license application fees and has laid down new excise tax brackets for liquor shops. Meanwhile the new policy could lead to an increase in liquor costs in the state, point out liquor shop owners. Furthermore under the new policy, the non-refundable application fee for liquor shops has been hiked from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh.
Previously in 2017, the fee was hiked from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh and had helped collect over Rs 400 crore as license fee from over 41,000 applications. Perhaps the Revenue Department has also issued notification on the allotment of retail liquor shops licenses for 2019-21 and the new excise policy is expected to come into effect from November 1, 2019.
Moreover a special retail excise tax of Rs 5 lakh per annum will also be collected from the liquor shops as a one-time collection per licensee. Reportedly a total of six fee slabs have been set up for the traders to get a license the fee will range from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1.1 crore and the rate varies depending on the population density of where the shop is to come up. Telangana wine dealers association president D Venkateswara Rao said, "The retailer's margin on beer has been reduced from 25% to 20% and as much as 40% of retailers’ share of profit is from beer and reducing the same can cause us losses."
