Carling admits its beers are WEAKER than advertised so brewers can dodge a £50m tax bill
The company is one of many beer giants who have cut alcohol content to lower tax duty bills in recent years.
CARLING has been accused of dodging a £50 million tax bill - by lying about the amount of alcohol in its lager.
The beverage is marketed in Britain at 4 percent strength but brewers have admitted it’s actually weaker - measuring just 3.7 percent.
Court documents reveal the drink has been made 0.3 per cent less alcoholic than advertised for the last five years.
But brewers Molson Coors didn’t change the strength recorded on Carling labels because they thought customers would "demand a slice" of the saving, tribunal documents said.
The brewer insists customers have not been misled and its labelling was "entirely consistent with the law".
It was revealed after the HMRC brought legal action against the beer makers over an alleged unpaid multi-million pound duty bill.
The brewers won the case at the Royal Courts of Justice in London in March by revealing it changed its flagship British lager's alcohol content in September 2012 - but the admission was made about the strength.
The company is one of many beer giants who have cut alcohol content to lower tax duty bills in recent years.
The tribunal papers also revealed how tests were carried out on a range of strengths from just below 4 per cent to 3.7 per cent “in an attempt to establish the level at which there might be a negative reaction” from the public, it was reported.
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The brewer's marketing director Martin Coyle said customers even "preferred" the weaker lager.
The tribunal papers said: “A key driver for the decision not to change the labelled abv was to protect Molson Coors' cost, as many of its customers would "demand a slice" of the saving.”
In other cases, Heineken has reduced the strength of John Smith's Bitter from 3.8 to 3.4 per cent.
Strongbow cider has gone from 5.3 to 5 per cent, while lagers Stella Artois, Cobra, Budweiser and Carlsberg Export all have fallen from 5 to 4.8 per cent.
Carling said: “Due to their natural ingredients, all beers are permitted to have a slight variation between the finished product and the alcohol content stated on the label.
“For most beers, the allowed variation is 0.5 per cent.”
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