Calcutta, March 17: Come April, you will have to shell out more for a drink, but staying in an air-conditioned hotel room may not pinch your pocket as much as it does now.

Finance minister Asim Dasgupta’s budget today proposed a new system of levying excise duty on liquor that will make premium brands costlier. Regular brands may, however, become slightly cheaper.

“At present, excise duty on foreign liquor is based on alcohol content. The maximum retail price (MRP), however, varies widely depending on the brand,” Dasgupta said.

“This is a distorted system — the excise duty on the price of premium and super-premium brands is almost the same as that on low-priced liquor with the same alcohol content. Under the new system, excise duty will be calculated as a percentage of the MRP.”

There is also a proposal to discount 65 per cent of the supply and distribution costs (which go into the MRP) while calculating the excise duty.

The excise duty on liquor now varies between Rs 80 and Rs 400 per London Proof Litre (a measure of the strength of alcohol), with the rate being the same for all brands across any particular kind of liquor, such as whisky.

“In most cases, the rate is Rs 186 per LPL,” an excise official said.

So, different brands of, say, whisky with the same LPL level are charged equal excise duty whatever the price of the bottle.

“The excise duty on some ordinary brands was, therefore, more than that on the premium brands,” said a senior official of IFB Agro Ltd, which makes brands such as Volga vodka, Old Pirate whisky and Blue Lagoon gin.

Dasgupta has also proposed lowering the luxury tax on hotels to 5 per cent from the current 10 per cent. “I have exempted rooms with a tariff of up to Rs 1,000 a day from luxury tax,” he said.

Under a 1972 act, hotels are required to pay a 10 per cent luxury tax on air-conditioned rooms that cost Rs 500 a day or more. Non-AC rooms are not taxed.

The finance minister has also given relief to cinemas by including two-screen movie theatres in the multiplex category.

Single-screen theatres that upgrade to two screens will be entitled to a four-year tax holiday, during which they can collect entertainment tax from customers and use the proceeds as subsidy for capital expenditure.