Senator Calls To Repeal New Reporting Requirement On Alcohol Sales, Local Bar Owner Agrees

State Senator Leonidas P. Raptakis (Dem - Coventry, East Greenwich, West Greenwich) has introduced legislation calling for repeal of a new regulation that requires restaurants, bars and alcohol retailers to provide a report for the Division of Taxation detailing total sales of alcoholic beverages in the past year.

The reporting requirement was included as part of the State Budget for the current fiscal year that was signed into law last June.

Raptakis says it's “burdensome to businesses” and expressed concern that “it was buried deep in the state budget and was not a topic of discussion” during budget debate in the previous session.

"Last year, the state has passed a lot of new legislation on small businesses," said Ken Lacey, owner of Easton's Point Pub in Middletown.  "We put together this new report, but we had little notice and it took us a lot of time."

“Elected officials throughout the state are talking about reducing the burdens on businesses and streamlining regulations and then we see this kind of proposal put through in the eleventh hour, buried hundreds of pages into the state budget,” said Raptakis.

Lacey calls the legislation a tax.

"What lawmakers need to realize is legislation on small business always has a cost, it's a tax," he said.  "If I come in on a Sunday to do this report, I hire a bartender to work.  That's both my time and a direct cost."

Senator Raptakis said restaurant and bar owners received notification from the Division of Taxation only a few weeks ago week that they had until Feb. 1, 2013, to provide this new report, a detailed two-page form that requires businesses to compile their total alcoholic beverage sales for the previous year.

By giving businesses little more than a month to compile these numbers, Senator Raptakis said the new law is not taking into account the fact that there may be many businesses which don’t have a system to break down what they do on alcohol sales as opposed to food sales. 

He said it is one thing to get advanced notice that your business must start compiling this information going forward, but demanding that businesses turn back the clock and dig up such details is not realistic.

“This is an unnecessary new burden on businesses and I think the General Assembly will recognize that this is not the kind of regulation we want to impose on Rhode Island businesses which are already struggling in this economy,” said Raptakis.