New Hampshire alcohol tax
State alcohol excise, per gallon · tax year 2026 · federal tax excluded
Beer
$0.30
a gallon
Wine
not published
a gallon
Spirits
$0
a gallon
Among control states
16
no national rank — see below
How New Hampshire taxes a drink
- New Hampshire does not tax spirits at all. Not lightly — not at all. The state sells them itself, so what would be a tax somewhere else is simply the price the state charges. Beer is different: that carries $0.30 a gallon, because private brewers sell it. ⚠️ So a table showing nothing in the spirits column here is not showing you a bargain.
- New Hampshire does not publish a rate for every kind of drink, because for some of them the state is the seller rather than the taxman. Where a figure exists it is shown below. Where none does, it is missing because there is nothing to publish — not because it was left out.
- New Hampshire sells liquor as well as taxing it. The state holds the wholesale trade itself, so part of what it earns from alcohol is profit rather than tax, and the rate shown here is only the taxed part. ⛔ No national rank is given for that reason. Among states with the same arrangement, New Hampshire ranks 16 on spirits.
- New Hampshire levies no excise on distilled spirits. The figure is a genuine zero rather than an unpublished value: the state operates as the retail and wholesale seller, so its entire take is realized in the markup rather than through a rate. Beer, sold privately, carries $0.30 per gallon. ⛔ A cross-state comparison that reads this zero as a low tax burden inverts the position — the state's extraction on spirits is not lower, it is simply not collected as excise.
- New Hampshire publishes no excise rate for at least one beverage category, which in a control jurisdiction is structural rather than a data gap: where the state operates as the wholesaler, its revenue arises as trading margin and no per-gallon excise exists to report. ⛔ A zero would misstate this as an untaxed beverage, which is the opposite of the position.
- Wholesale distribution of distilled spirits in New Hampshire is state-operated, so reported excise captures only part of the state's alcohol revenue; the remainder is realized as trading margin. ⛔ A national rank is withheld accordingly. ⭐ Within the 17 jurisdictions sharing this structure, New Hampshire ranks 16 on spirits — a comparison that holds because both sides omit margin identically.
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.
New Hampshire against Texas
A $75,000 salary
| Measure | New Hampshire | Texas |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $61,593 | $61,593 |
| Worth after local prices | $58,467 | $63,383 |
| Share of pay taxed | 17.88% | 17.88% |
| State sales tax | 0% | 6.25% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | Yes | No |
| Property tax rate | 1.66% | 1.49% |
| Price level | 105.3 | 97.2 |
| Housing prices | 114.6 | 97.4 |
| Fuel tax | 22.2¢ | 20¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $1.78 | $1.41 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: New Hampshire, 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 | $0.30 | $3 |
| Wine | state is the seller — no rate published | — |
| Spirits | $0 | $0 |
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 New Hampshire'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 New Hampshire 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 New Hampshire'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?
Charged by the gallon, upstream, and already in the price. Beer, wine and spirits carry different per-gallon rates, so two bottles at one price can carry very different tax.
Is this a cheap state for this?
Near the bottom: 16 of 17. Low tax and low price are not the same thing, and only the first is set by the state.
Why does this state run the liquor shops itself?
It sells rather than merely taxes. Where the state runs spirits distribution, some of the price is its trading margin, not excise — so comparing its "rate" with a licensing state's compares two different things.
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 16 of 17, in the lower third. ⚠️ Excise rank is a poor proxy for retail price: production, distribution and retail margin dominate the final figure, and the tax component is the only part under state control.
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.