Montana alcohol tax
State alcohol excise, per gallon · tax year 2026 · federal tax excluded
Beer
$0.14
a gallon
Wine
$1.06
a gallon
Spirits
$11
a gallon
Among control states
11
no national rank — see below
How Montana taxes a drink
- Spirits are taxed far harder than beer in Montana. A gallon of beer carries $0.14, wine $1.06, spirits $11. Beer to spirits is $10. Per drink the gap narrows, because there is far more alcohol in the whiskey.
- Something unusual about Montana: the state is in the liquor business. It buys and sells wholesale itself. So its alcohol income is partly profit and only partly the tax shown here. ⛔ That is why there is no national ranking on this page. What can be compared honestly is one control state against another, and among those Montana sits 11 on spirits.
- Per-gallon rates in Montana run $0.14 for beer and $11 for spirits, a spread of $10. ⚠️ Normalizing for ethanol content compresses this considerably, and the residual difference is the actual policy choice. Because these are specific taxes, inflation erodes all three rates in real terms simultaneously unless a legislature acts.
- As a control state, Montana exercises the wholesale monopoly directly, and the excise figures reported here capture only the levied component of its alcohol revenue. ⛔ No national rank is assigned: ranking a control state's published rate against license states compares a partial figure with a complete one, and the data source behind this page warns against exactly that. ⭐ Among the 17 control states, where the comparison is structurally sound, Montana ranks 11 on spirits.
At the register
A $75,000 salary
| Tax added | $0.00 |
|---|---|
| You hand over | $60.00 |
| Rate here | 0% |
This state charges no general sales tax.
Montana against Texas
A $75,000 salary
| Measure | Montana | Texas |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $58,716 | $61,593 |
| Worth after local prices | $65,063 | $63,383 |
| Share of pay taxed | 21.71% | 17.88% |
| State sales tax | 0% | 6.25% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | Yes | No |
| Property tax rate | 0.72% | 1.49% |
| Price level | 90.2 | 97.2 |
| Housing prices | 76.7 | 97.4 |
| Fuel tax | 33¢ | 20¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $1.70 | $1.41 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: Montana, No general sales tax; Texas, Harris County (Houston). Clothing: one $100 item; higher prices can change tax.
Beer, wine and spirits, per gallon
All three are charged per gallon of drink, which makes them directly comparable with each other — though nobody buys a gallon at a time, and per glass the gaps look much smaller. Federal tax is charged on top and is not included.
| Drink | Per gallon | On 10 gallons |
|---|---|---|
| Beer | $0.14 | $1.40 |
| Wine | $1.06 | $11 |
| Spirits | $11 | $106 |
What this page cannot tell you
- ⚠️ These are per gallon, which is not how anybody buys a drink. Per glass the differences between beer, wine and spirits look much smaller than they do here.
- Federal alcohol tax is charged on top of all of this, and general sales tax usually lands on the final price as well. Neither is included in Montana's figures here.
- Some cities and counties add their own drink taxes too, and those are not counted here.
- ⚠️ Rates are per gallon of beverage, not per unit of alcohol or per serving. Normalizing by ethanol content or by standard drink compresses the beer-to-spirits differential substantially, so per-gallon figures overstate the disparity a drinker experiences.
- Federal excise applies in addition and is excluded, being uniform nationally. General sales tax, where Montana levies one, also applies at retail on a price that already embeds the excise — so the two compound, and neither layer is included in these figures.
- Local alcohol excise and on-premise drink taxes exist in a number of jurisdictions and are excluded; these figures cover Montana's state-level rates only. On-premise sales are also frequently taxed differently from off-premise, which this dataset does not distinguish.
Questions people ask
Is the alcohol tax added at the checkout?
It is inside the price already, levied per gallon on the beverage upstream. The rate differs by beverage type, so what a bottle carries depends on its contents rather than its price.
How does this compare with other states?
In the middle of the pack — 11 of 17. That is a more common position than either extreme, and it means neighbors are likely to be charging something similar rather than very different.
Why does this state run the liquor shops itself?
The state is the wholesaler here. Part of the price is margin rather than duty, which is why rate comparisons across that line do not mean much.
At what stage is alcohol excise levied?
Alcohol excise is levied per gallon at the producer or wholesaler stage and is embedded in retail prices. Rates are set separately by beverage class, so effective tax per container varies with alcohol content and volume rather than with retail price. General sales tax may apply additionally at the point of sale.
Where does this state sit in the national distribution?
This state ranks 11 of 17, within the middle third. Cross-border substitution effects are weakest at this position because adjacent-state differentials are typically small relative to travel cost.
How does a control jurisdiction differ from a license jurisdiction?
This is a control jurisdiction: the state participates directly in spirits distribution or retail rather than licensing private operators exclusively. Revenue accrues partly as trading margin rather than as excise, so published excise rates are not comparable with license-state rates without adjustment. ⚠️ Rankings here are computed against other control states only, for that reason.