What a Fed Gov't Shutdown Means for Bev/Al

Just because the Alcohol & Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau closes its doors during the expected forthcoming partial government shutdown, doesn't mean you won't be expected  to file tax returns and pay taxes to the bureau. It also doesn't mean that there's a lien against your business, or if it goes into bankruptcy, that TTB officials won't act quickly to protect the government's interest in the case.  That's also true if there were plans to seize your property for nonpayment of taxes.

Aside from continuing to pay taxes and file returns, most of the other activities above won't affect most (if any) people in the bev/al industry.   What will affect you is processing of permits, certificates of label approval, drawback claims related to manufacture of non-beverage products and laboratory services.

The last time the government went through this partial shutdown routine in 2019, which lasted five weeks, the number of permit, formila and label submissions received during the funding lapse roughly doubled TTB's backlog.  That meant it could take up to 30 or more days to receive a label or formula approval and up to 150 days to receive a permit.

During that last shutdown, TTB authorized overtime as needed and applied a "risk- based enforcement approach to address compliance issues that arose during the shutdown."