“Alcoholic Beverage Industry Proposes Changing the IEPS to Raise an Additional 3.9 Billion Pesos”
El Universal reports:
“To discourage excessive alcohol use and the informal market in Mexico, it is necessary to change the current tax model so that tax is levied on the quantity and not on the price of the beverage, which could bring in additional revenue of 3.9 billion pesos.
“This was the proposal put forward by the Commission for the Wine and Spirits Industry (CIVyL) just days before the federal government presents to Congress the proposed economic package for fiscal year 2027, which is expected to contain a set of tax changes.”
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Assessment
The Commission for the Wine and Spirits Industry (CIVyL) is the lobby group of spirits producers in Mexico, representing multinational alcohol industry giants such as Pernod Ricard and Diageo.
CIVyL pushed the same alcohol tax last year, and Movendi International exposed how it would make alcohol cheaper: modelling of the scheme showed the average price of many alcoholic beverages would fall. Now the alcohol industry front group brings the same concept back days before the economic package reaches Congress: switching the IEPS from a price-based to a volume-based tax, calibrated “without increasing the total tax burden”.
Taxing alcohol by alcohol content is in line with WHO technical guidance – but only when it raises the overall price of alcohol. In CIVyL’s version, “revenue neutrality” means higher-content alcohol becomes cheaper, and the higher-priced products its Big Alcohol members sell would be taxed less, since the proposal is designed to reduce the “fiscal pressure” on tequila, mezcal, Mexican wine and craft beer. A bill in Congress built on the same low-rate ad quantum design would also lead to cheaper alcohol.
The 3.9 billion pesos in additional revenue CIVyL offers comes from a fiscal simulator developed by the National Chamber of the Tequila Industry – a clear and direct conflict of interest. Notably, it only amounts to less than 1% of the 552 billion pesos that alcohol harm costs Mexican society each year, according to the National Institute of Public Health.
CIVyL also claims that 44.2% of spirits volume in Mexico is illicit – a figure from “research” commissioned by the alcohol industry itself, whose methods cannot be verified. This is the illicit alcohol scare tactic the alcohol industry deploys wherever alcohol taxation reaches the policy agenda – Movendi International has exposed its Mexican version before.
The Alcohol Action Network (RASA) released the analysis of the ENCODAT 2025 survey by the National Institute of Public Health and the National Commission for Mental Health and Addictions:
- 67% of Mexicans support raising alcohol taxes,
- 88% support reduced sales hours, and
- 86.8% support a higher minimum purchase age.
- Even among people who frequently use alcohol, 52.7% support higher taxes.
This dismantles the alcohol industry’s claim that Mexican society would not accept ambitious alcohol policy. Mexican civil society has been mobilising around these findings since the survey’s release in February. RASA also notes how long Mexico’s alcohol policy has stood still: the advertising rules for alcoholic beverages were last reformed in 2008, and the last alcohol-specific tax reform dates to 2013.
The government failed to included alcohol taxes in the 2026 budget even as the issue reached the agenda, and the OECD has since flagged alcohol tax reform as a win-win for Mexico’s health and public finances.