Technical Corrections to the TTB Regulations

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY <SUBAGY>Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau</SUBAGY> <CFR>27 CFR Parts 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 40, 41, 44, 45, 46, 53, 70, 71, and 72</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. TTB-2024-0006; T.D. TTB-196]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1513-AB93</RIN> <SUBJECT>Technical Corrections to the TTB Regulations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, Treasury. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; Treasury decision. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this final rule, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is amending its regulations to make miscellaneous non-substantive corrections to its regulations. These include correcting grammatical, spelling, and typographical errors; correcting or updating statutory authority citations, regulatory cross-references, and information collection control and TTB form numbers; updating references to publications and agency names and organizational structures; updating mailing, delivery, and website addresses; and revising certain gender exclusive pronouns. The technical amendments described in this document do not add or change any regulatory, recordkeeping, or reporting requirement or change TTB's interpretation of any regulation. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective December 6, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Michael D. Hoover, Regulations and Rulings Division, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, 1310 G Street NW, Box 12, Washington, DC 20005; phone 202-453-1039, ext. 135. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Due to the number and non-substantive nature of the technical corrections made in this document, not all individual amendments are discussed below in this document's preamble, but all changes are described in the regulatory text section further below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">General Description of Technical Amendments</HD> The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) periodically makes non-substantive technical corrections to its regulations, which are contained in 27 CFR chapter I. The technical amendments described in this document do not add any new or change any existing TTB regulatory requirement, and the described amendments do not change TTB's interpretation of any regulation. Additionally, the described amendments do not add any new or change any existing recordkeeping, reporting, or labeling requirement to the TTB regulations, nor do they change any burden associated with such requirements. In general, throughout its regulations, TTB is correcting grammatical, spelling, and typographical errors; correcting or updating statutory authority citations, regulatory cross-references, and TTB form numbers; updating Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control numbers for existing TTB information collections; updating references to publications and agency names and organizational structures; and updating mailing, delivery, and website addresses. Also, in light of Treasury Department policy, TTB is replacing certain gender exclusive pronouns, such as “he” and “his,” with specific references to official titles or positions, such as “the Secretary,” or with gender inclusive or neutral pronouns or phrases, such as “their,” “he or she,” or “her or his.” In particular, TTB is revising gender exclusive references to the Secretary of the Treasury, the TTB Administrator, and certain other government officials. However, given the large number of gender exclusive pronouns in some parts of its regulations that refer to TTB officers, industry members, or members of the public, TTB will make further similar amendments in future rulemaking documents. With regard to updating statutory authority citations, TTB is primarily revising the general statutory authority citations for the regulations contained in 27 CFR parts 20, 29, 44, 45, 46, and 70 to add a reference to 26 U.S.C. 6109, which is the section of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) that authorizes the collection of identifying numbers such as employer identification numbers from persons required to file returns, statements, or other documents. The addition of 26 U.S.C. 6109 to the statutory authority citation lists for those CFR parts merely corrects those lists and does not add or change any requirement to provide TTB with identifying numbers. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Other Technical Amendments</HD> In addition to the general technical corrections noted above, TTB is making other unique technical amendments in specific parts of 27 CFR chapter I, as described below. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Part 4, Labeling and Advertising of Wine</HD> In 27 CFR 4.10, Meaning of terms, TTB is correcting typographical errors in the definitions of “pure condensed must” and “sugar.” <HD SOURCE="HD2">Part 9, American Viticultural Areas</HD> In 27 CFR 9.11(b), TTB is updating the postal mail and hand-delivery addresses for the submission of American viticultural area (AVA) petitions. TTB is also correcting typographical and other unintended errors in the boundary descriptions of several AVAs. These corrections do not change the intended boundary of any existing AVA, nor do they add or remove any acreage from any established AVA. Among those specific boundary corrections are three for the Eagle Foothills AVA as described in 27 CFR 9.252—in paragraph (c)(2), the phrase “the western boundary of sections 31 and 30 to the northwest corner of section 31,” is corrected to read “the western boundary of section 31 to the southwest corner of section 30;” in paragraph (c)(3), “section 31” is corrected to read “section 30;” and, in paragraph (c)(9), “3,400-foor” is corrected to read “3,400-foot.” <HD SOURCE="HD2">Part 19, Distilled Spirits Plants</HD> Among other corrections in part 19, TTB is updating cross-references to 27 CFR part 5, Labeling and Advertising of Distilled Spirits, contained in that part in response to the publication of T.D. TTB-176, Modernization of the Labeling and Advertising Regulations for Distilled Spirits and Malt Beverages, published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> of February 9, 2022, at 87 FR 7526. While T.D. TTB-176 revised part 5 in its entirety, that final rule inadvertently did not update the cross-references to that part contained in part 19. As such, this document updates the relevant cross-references contained in part 19 to match the current part 5 subpart designations and section numbers. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Part 21, Formulas for Denatured Alcohol and Rum</HD> In 27 CFR 21.151, TTB is correcting an inadvertent error made in a final rule published in 2016 to amend the regulations concerning denatured alcohol and products made with industrial alcohol. See T.D. TTB-140, published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on August 30, 2016, at 81 FR 59445. In that final rule, TTB removed certain obsolete special denatured alcohol (S.D.A.) formulas from the regulations, including Formula No. 27-B, which, at the time, was described in 27 CFR 21.54. As a result of that formula's removal, TTB removed all references to S.D.A. Formula No. 27-B from the table contained in § 21.151, List of denaturants authorized for denatured spirits, including its listing as the only approved formula for “Green soap, U.S.P.” However, in T.D. TTB-140, TTB inadvertently failed to include an amendatory instruction to remove the entire entry for “Green soap, U.S.P.” from the approved formulas table. Therefore, TTB is removing the remaining portion of that obsolete entry. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Part 24, Wine</HD> TTB recently published a final rule amending certain of its regulations pertaining to the production of wine in 27 CFR part 24 to add to the list of materials and processes authorized for the treatment of wine and of the juice from which wine is made, and to expand the authorized uses of certain materials already authorized under the regulations. See T.D. TTB-185, published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on August 24, 2022, at 87 FR 51880. That final rule contained an inadvertent error in the amended regulatory text of 27 CFR 24.250. As explained in that final rule's related prior notice of proposed rulemaking (Notice No. 164, published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on November 22, 2016, at 81 FR 83752) and in the final rule, TTB intended to make a technical change to amend § 24.250, Application for use of new treating material or process, by revising paragraph (b)(4) to state that an application to use a new treating material or process must include documentary evidence from the FDA that the material is consistent with the food additive requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act for its intended purpose in the amounts proposed for the particular treatment contemplated. This differs from the original regulatory text in that it does not require documentary evidence that the FDA has “approved” the use of the material. However, the amendatory instruction for § 24.250 in the final rule contained an inadvertent error that caused all of paragraph (b) to be removed and replaced by the text that was only intended to amend paragraph (b)(4). TTB is correcting § 24.250 by restoring the previous text of paragraph (b) and by amending only the text of paragraph (b)(4) as intended. TTB also is amending 27 CFR 24.270, which sets forth the Federal excise tax rates on wine to reflect the statutory increase, from 14 percent to 16 percent, in the maximum alcohol by volume for the still wine tax class at 26 U.S.C 5041(b)(1) and in the minimum alcohol by volume for the still wine tax class at 26 U.S.C. 5041(b)(2). TTB is taking this action in response to the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2020 (see Division EE of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (Pub. L. 116-260)), which made permanent the temporary p ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 156k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━