“Our new system will be designed around a common-sense principle: the stronger the drink, the higher the rate,” the teetotaler Sunak said.
Beer duties were first introduced in 1643 by his predecessors in Parliament, when they levied a tax on alcohol for the first time to finance the Roundhead armies in the English Civil War against Charles I’s Cavaliers.
Sunak criticized the current tax system, which raises more than 12 billion pounds ($17 billion) a year, as outdated, adding that the changes would not have been possible if Britain had remained within the European Union.
