AT A GLANCE

COLUMBIA - People who buy liquor in a store to mix their own homemade cocktail will have to share the cost of switching to free pour under a provision approved Tuesday by the Senate Finance Committee.

The change is radically different from what has been discussed for years.

A Finance subcommittee assigned to study a free-pour bill developed by the Judiciary Committee threw out the original proposal of replacing the minibottle tax with a 5 percent cocktail tax.

Instead, the new plan is to add 56 cents tax to each liter of liquor sold, whether in a store or bar. The full committee adopted the plan with little discussion.

The S.C. Hospitality Association is pleased because the change shifts some of the cocktail tax burden to home drinkers.

Liquor store owners and distillers were not sure how to react.

As the free-pour bill worked its way through legislative hearings in the past six years, liquor store owners repeatedly insisted they thought it was unfair to their customers to rearrange tax collections so that package buyers had to help pay for the switch to free pour.

John Kelsey, president of a group of liquor store owners who are licensed to sell to bars, said the one thing about the change to free pour that liquor stores feared has now apparently come to pass: that everyone will have to help pay for it.

"We had no idea, really, it was coming," he said.

Many more people buy liquor for home use than buy it in bars, Kelsey said.

Sen. Verne Smith, R-Greer, proposed the tax change, which was backed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence.

His plan includes leaving the responsibility for paying the taxes with the handful of wholesalers who are licensed to bring liquor into the state and sell it to stores. They currently pay the tax on minibottles and pass the cost down to the buyers.

"It certainly will be a lot better for the state to collect it from these five or six sources than from 3,100 sources," Smith said, referring to the number of licensed bars that the state might have to track for proper tax collection in the cocktail tax original plan.

"I think it's a far better approach," said Sen. Thomas Alexander, R-Walhalla, who is chairman of the Senate Tourism Caucus and a longtime supporter of free pour.

"We find no real objection with that," Sen. Dick Elliott, D-North Myrtle Beach, told the subcommittee. Elliott led the Judiciary subcommittee that held hearings on free-pour-enabling legislation.

When voters approved the change in November that ends the nation's last minibottle requirement, legislators had to follow with implementing laws. The major question is how to replace the tax of 25 cents per minibottle in a way that does not produce less revenue.

Most of the liquor tax revenue is used for local alcohol- and drug-abuse treatment centers.

Tom Sponseller, president of the S.C. Hospitality Association, said his members always favored the cocktail tax because it would provide the least incentive to cheat. But Smith's proposal is equitable, he said.

The current tax on a store purchase of a liter is $1.42. The tax on the same amount of liquor in minibottles is $6.42. Now the tax for a liter bought for any use would be $1.98.

"This is the best thing that could happen to the restaurants and bar owners," he said. They will get a cut in costs while store purchasers will see an increase.

Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head Island, another longtime supporter of free-pour, said he likes the 56-cent tax because it's the same for everyone.

"There's no question there's a shift," he said.

While some may say it is unfair to store purchasers, others could say the current tax system has been unfair to bar drinkers because it taxed them more heavily, Richardson said.

The high tax on cocktails was a result of the antidrinking sentiment that prevailed when minibottles were adopted in 1974 as a compromise in the change from brown-bagging, or customers bringing their own liquor if they wanted it.

The free-pour bill could come up for discussion on the Senate floor today.