In mid-April we published a post about Senate Bill 113 passing the Senate and moving to the House for review. We have good news: Governor Mike Pence signed Indiana SB 113 into law yesterday, May 4th. This bill was approved by the House with amendments by a vote of 91-7. The Senate agreed to these amendments by a vote of 42-5. The new law will go into effect on July 1, 2015.

The House amended SB 113 in two significant ways. The House replaced “a proposed dramatic increase in the direct seller permit fee of $500 annually with a tiered fee ranging from $100-$500 based on the amount of wine directly shipped by a winery to IN consumers in the previous year.” This addition will help decrease costs for those wineries with smaller volumes of directly shipped wine in IN.

Additionally, the House removed the current requirement on the direct seller to obtain a signed statement from the consumer affirming that he/she is of age at the point of sale. This makes the law “consistent with eliminating the initial face-to-face requirement contained in the Senate passed version of SB 113.” Also worthy to note, SB 113 eliminates the previous requirement to have a surety bond.

This legislation is good news for those out-of-state wineries that are looking to expand their direct to consumer base to include Indiana and don’t currently have a relationship with an Indiana wholesaler.

Unfortunately, wineries still cannot apply for an Indiana Direct Wine Seller Permit if they have: “…distributed wine through a wine wholesaler in Indiana within the one hundred twenty (120) days immediately preceding the applicant’s application for a direct wine seller’s permit and does not distribute wine through a wine wholesaler in Indiana during the term of the direct wine seller’s permit…”

However, if your winery does not have or intend to have a relationship with an Indiana wholesaler, you are encouraged to apply for this seller permit. The Indiana ATC is already working to update their current application and processes. We will follow up with a more detailed blog post on applying for the new laws as soon as information becomes available.

If you’re looking to expand your direct-to-consumer wine sales, we encourage you to sign up for a demo to find out how ShipCompliant can help.