From: Richard Morrison [mailto:morrison@taxfoundation.org] Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 9:45 AM To: Humphrey, Tom Cc: Chester, Tom; Scott W. Drenkard; Nick Kasprak Subject: Beer excise taxes Tom - I read your PolitiFact piece this morning and I'm a little confused at your reasoning for calling our map of beer excise tax rates "false." The map we published is titled "Monday Map: State Beer Excise Tax Rates." It accurately reports state excise tax rates on beer. How does that wind up in the false column? Your piece says "the Tax Foundation figures do not fully capture what the beer-drinking Tennessean actually pays in taxes." But that's not what we set out to do. Yes, multiple taxes affect the ultimate price of beer in Tennessee - and if we had wanted to do an in- depth study on how the final retail price if beer is affected by all of those taxes, we would have. But that's not what we did, and it's not what we said we did. The premise of your piece seems to be that we are responsible for "media reports saying that Tennessee has one of the lowest beer-tax levels in the nation." But we didn't write any of those arguably misleading media reports. We just reported the state excise tax rate on beer for what it is. Given that, I fail to see how we qualify for false status. Richard Morrison Manager of Communications Tax Foundation National Press Building - Washington, DC 202-464-5102 / @RichardMorrison http://taxfoundation.org