The two bottle shops Mr Cains and his wife Michelle own are among a group of more than 50 that would be hardest hit under proposed changes to liquor licensing that would drastically increase the fees for stores that turn over $1 million in alcohol sales per year.

Australian Liquor Stores Association chief executive Terry Mott said the ACT's off-licence fees were already the highest in the nation and further increases would force bottle shop owners to cut staff and jack up liquor prices.

"The taxes on licensees in the ACT are already over 20 times that of neighbouring licensees in NSW and that will have a further impact on those businesses who employ local people in a competitive market place. They will have to increase their prices or they'll have to reduce employment in order to make ends meet," Mr Mott said.

Just last week the ACT Government backed away from plans to dramatically hike fees for nightclubs and bars open past 3am, which critics labelled as "lockout laws in disguise".

But the ALSA said Chief Minister Andrew Barr has so far refused to meet with them over the proposed changes, despite the "significant consequences" for Canberra businesses.

Mr Mott said there are more than 170 bottle shops in the ACT that employ thousands of Canberrans and serve than 300,000 shoppers every week.

"What it will mean at the end of the day is less service, longer queues, increased prices and possibly less employment in bottle shops because of the additional taxation," Mr Mott said.

"We will be campaigning through to the [ACT] election to make sure that ACT voters and consumers understand the impact this is going to have on them and on local jobs and local prices."

Paul Cains, who already works seven days a week at his bottle shops Prohibition in Kingston and Urban Cellars in Curtin, feared he would have to put off up to three casual staff and raise his prices to stay in business.

"With the increase we won't be able to afford to pay them as well as pay the fee as well," he said.

He also worried he would lose customers over the border, as liquor licence fees in NSW range from $510 to $2040 per store per year.

"Kingston is five, 10 minutes from Queanbeyan. It's not that far in Canberra to go further to avoid paying that higher fee," he said.

Jim Murphy's director Adrian Murphy said the changes would make ACT bottle shops uncompetitive.

"We're currently sitting 20 times higher than NSW in licence fees," he said.

"With online being such a large proportion in the Australian market now it puts us out of whack to compete. If you can buy it online, why would you come to bricks and mortar stores to support family businesses?"

ALSA chief executive Terry Mott said the liquor industry was generally supportive of the government's alcohol white paper but believed its focus on bottle shops was misguided.

"We've made it clear to the Attorney General that we support a number of measures but this one we do not because we feel that this is an untargeted measure, it does absolutely nothing to impact on those people that are causing harm and some more focused measures are required," Mr Mott said.