The Johnstown Flood Tax is an 18% Pennsylvania levy on every bottle of wine and spirits sold through the state’s liquor stores. It was passed in 1936 as a temporary 10% emergency measure to fund recovery after a St. Patrick’s Day flood, but the legislature never wrote in an expiration date, raised the rate twice, and now uses the roughly $450 million it generates each year for the General Fund rather than flood relief.1Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Statutes Title 47 P.S. 795 – Emergency Tax on Liquors Amount of Tax Collection
How the Tax Started
On St. Patrick’s Day 1936, floodwaters swept through Pennsylvania, damaging communities from Pittsburgh to Johnstown to towns across the Northeast. The legislature responded with an emergency excise tax on all liquor sold by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, set at 10% of the sale price and signed into law on June 9, 1936. The framing was clearly temporary: money for disaster recovery, tied to a crisis.1Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Statutes Title 47 P.S. 795 – Emergency Tax on Liquors Amount of Tax Collection
It never came off the books. The rate climbed to 15% by the 1960s and then to 18%, where it has stayed. Each increase answered a budget need, not a flood-related one, and no version of the statute has ever included a sunset clause.
What You Pay It On
The 18% applies to all wine and distilled spirits sold through the PLCB’s retail system. Whiskey, vodka, rum, tequila, wine, fortified wines, flavored spirits, premixed bottled cocktails: if it fits the definition of “liquor” in 47 P.S. § 794 and the PLCB sells it, the tax applies.2Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Statutes Title 47 P.S. 794 – Definitions That definition covers any alcoholic beverage with more than half of one percent alcohol by volume, with one important carve-out: beer and other malt beverages are exempt.3Pennsylvania Department of Revenue. Malt Beverage and Liquor Tax
The tax hits everyone equally, from a shopper buying a single bottle to a restaurant stocking its bar through PLCB wholesale. The statute draws no distinction based on volume or intent.
How the 18% Hits Your Receipt
You will not see the flood tax broken out anywhere on your receipt. The 18% is calculated against the retail price, which already includes the PLCB’s markup and the federal excise tax embedded in the wholesale cost, and then folded into the shelf sticker before you ever pick up the bottle.3Pennsylvania Department of Revenue. Malt Beverage and Liquor Tax
Take a bottle of bourbon with a $30 pre-tax retail price. The flood tax adds $5.40, pushing the shelf price to $35.40. Pennsylvania’s 6% sales tax is then calculated on that $35.40, so it works out to about $2.12 rather than the $1.80 you would owe on the original $30. You are paying sales tax on dollars that are themselves a tax. The compounding is invisible because the 18% is already baked in when the sales tax gets applied at the register.p>
Where the Money Goes
The statute is explicit that every dollar collected goes into the Commonwealth’s General Fund.1Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Statutes Title 47 P.S. 795 – Emergency Tax on Liquors Amount of Tax Collection None of it is earmarked for flood relief, infrastructure repair, or the Johnstown region. The General Fund pays for whatever the legislature decides to fund in a given budget year, including education, state police, and Medicaid.
The dollar figures are large and steady. In the 2024–25 fiscal year, Pennsylvania collected nearly $450 million from the flood tax. Alcohol sales hold up through most economic cycles, so the tax delivers reliable revenue. The PLCB remits collections to the Department of Revenue monthly under 72 P.S. § 1210.1.4Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Statutes Title 72 P.S. 1210.1 – Collection of Taxes by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board
Why It Never Expired
The word “emergency” in the title of the statute is the source of most public frustration. It sounds temporary. It was meant to be temporary. But no end date was ever written into the law, and no court has read one in. As long as 47 P.S. § 795 stays on the books without a sunset, the PLCB is legally required to collect the 18%.
The reenactment record shows how the tax became permanent by inertia. The 1936 act was reenacted in 1937 and amended repeatedly through 1968. Each round extended the levy and, in some years, raised the rate. By the time it reached 18% in the late 1960s, the connection to Johnstown flood recovery had been gone for decades. The name stuck; the crisis did not.
Efforts to Repeal It
Lawmakers have introduced repeal bills more than once. A recent version, House Bill 2142, described eliminating the tax as a “commonsense step to make our state competitive, stand by our restaurants and stores, and lessen the burden on businesses and consumers.”5Pennsylvania General Assembly. Co-Sponsorship Memo – Repealing the Johnstown Flood Tax The fairness argument usually leads: the emergency ended almost ninety years ago, and most consumers cannot even see the surcharge they are paying.
None of those bills have passed. The math is the obstacle. Pulling $450 million out of the General Fund with no identified replacement is not something the legislature has been willing to do, and no repeal proposal has offered a substitute source that survived committee. Until that gap gets filled, the flood tax stays in place, and the 18% keeps showing up in the shelf price of every bottle of wine and spirits at your local state store.