Wine group says volumetric tax to cost jobs

The Winemakers Federation of Australia says a shift to a volumetric tax on wine would have huge ramifications for the industry.

The recommendations of the Federal Government's Henry Tax review are expected to be released next week and the federation's Andrew Wilsmore says he is hopeful the Government will listen to its pleas to keep wine tax unchanged.

He says if a volumetric tax is introduced at the same rate as packaged beer - 95 per cent of wines will increase in price and 12,000 jobs would be lost across Australia.

"We have presented quite strong evidence that changing the taxation arrangement on wine does nothing to address the social harms of alcohol, there are much better policy mechanisms that are available to the Government should it wish to achieve those processes," he said.

"So moving us across will have a major disruption on the industry, especially right now as we're going through a major structural readjustment, a tax change would be a double whammy on the industry."