Incorrect beer duty rate
This guide is designed to help you troubleshoot any discrepancies with your beer duty rates in Breww. However, we do not represent HMRC or provide advice on their behalf.
This article is only relevant to UK duty calculations and does not apply to other calculated excise taxes in Breww.
Throughout this article, the term Beer will be used; if you produce any products other than beer, you may substitute "Beer" for "Alcohol" when looking for the relevant page, setting or button
Breww works hard to ensure we calculate your duty correctly in line with HMRC, ensuring that we are always up to date with current rates and changes. The rate Breww calculates should always match the rate calculated by HMRC. If it does not, you will need to check the figures you have provided Breww match those you are using to calculate your rate with HMRC. This guide will demonstrate which figures to check in Breww and how they compare with HMRC.
In Breww, all we need to calculate your beer duty rate for the current year is the following two figures:
- Actual alcohol production volume for last year
- Alcohol production estimate for this year
Both of these figures refer to the Hectolitres of Pure Alcohol (HLPA), not the Hectolitres of beer produced.
The Actual alcohol production volume for last year is used to calculate your rate prior to small producer relief, and the Alcohol production estimate for this year is used to ensure that you are eligible for small producer relief, which is only applicable if you are not expecting to produce more than 4,500HL of pure alcohol.
You can check the figures you have provided Breww with by heading to Beer duty and then clicking Beer duty settings. The top section of this page will be titled Production volumes. Please ensure these figures are correct and the same as those you enter when using the HMRC calculator.
If you wish to verify that Breww is calculating your rate correctly based on the figures you have provided, you can do so by taking the figures you have entered into the production volumes section of your beer duty settings and using these in the HMRC Small producer relief calculator (https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/guidance/work-out-your-small-producers-relief/start/production-year), the example here will be based on the figures in the screenshot above and is relevant to the Current production year at the time of writing (February 2025 to January 2026). Those figures are as follows:
- Actual alcohol production volume for last year - 130 HL (of pure alcohol)
- Alcohol production estimate for this year - 260 HL (of pure alcohol)
The following screen recording shows this information being used in the HMRC SPR calculator. The bottom figure of 260 is never entered, but you do have a yes/no question as to whether you are expecting to produce more than 4,500HL of alcohol, and based on the answer of 260, we can select no.
Completing the calculator leaves me with the following figures from HMRC:
We can now compare these figures to Breww by heading to Beer duty and should find they match exactly:
If you have entered the wrong annual production figure into Breww for either last year's actual production or this current year's expected, you will likely find that the rates and returns are wrong; if you update your figures, it will update the rate for the current return. If you have already had returns calculated at the wrong rate, please reach out to the Breww support team, and we will be able to assist in running a recalculation for those returns. If you have paid them already, we should be able to automatically add a reclaim for the overpaid amount to your current return in Breww.
- Ensure that the annual production figure entered into Breww for the previous year is set to the right value for the Hectolitres of Pure alcohol produced last year (not the total hectolitres of beer produced in the previous year).
- Ensure that this year's estimated production amount is only set over 4,500 if you anticipate producing over 4,500 HL of pure alcohol; setting your estimated production amount over 4,500 will remove any small producer relief.
- If you realise the production amount entered for the previous year is incorrect or the estimate for this year was erroneously above or below the 4,500 HL threshold for small producer relief, and you make the correction before the end of the first month for which Breww has created a return in the current duty year (this is typically February unless you joined Breww partway through the duty year), Breww will automatically adjust the return for you. If the correction is made after the month has ended, please get in touch with Breww support for assistance with recalculations or reclaim adjustments, as the system will only automatically correct the current month's return.
- If your production estimate for the current year was set too high, you can revise it. However, as long as the estimate was and remains below 4,500 HL of pure alcohol, the rate will not be affected. The estimate is used solely to confirm that your production stays within the small producer threshold.
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