UK Duty FAQs

TL;DR: The duty is only due when the beer (delivery) leaves the brewery.

We have a report to explain "missing" items - find this by going to the return in question, then using the Beer duty breakdown button in the top-right, followed by the What's not on my return and why? button.

Keep reading for more information...

Breww only reports duty on the actual movement of beer out of your duty suspense threshold. This can be achieved using the big Mark as dispatched button either on the individual delivery/collection or in bulk when managing a particular day's deliveries in the Deliveries screen.

This is the most cash-flow efficient way of calculating duty, however, it is more complicated to keep track of versus simply counting the sales... but don't worry, Breww handles all of this for you behind the scenes.

As the duty only becomes due at the point the beer leaves the brewery (even if paid for before then), the duty is always added to the current in-progress duty return and is never retrospectively added to a historical return. For this reason, it's important to use the Mark as dispatched button at the time the beer/vehicle leaves the brewery. If the delivery subsequently fails and the beer is returned, the duty is strictly still due, but Breww will keep track of this and when the same container of beer is delivered on another order the duty won't be paid again. Likewise, if the beer is lost/spoilt, enter this into Breww as an ullage and we'll sort out the duty for you. If this happens during the same month, the duty will never be paid, and if it happens after, we'll automatically add a reclaim for you.

If you need to account for additional duty payable for previous months, especially in the first month that you swap from using another duty calculation method to using Breww's, you can make positive or negative adjustments on your return. Adding these to Breww as well as the HMRC documents ensures that Breww's total always matches HMRC's total, there's full audibility and this will make your life much easier when explaining this in a tax inspection from HMRC. You can simply hand them access to your Breww duty section and let them look at all the detail they need to pass you with flying colours!

We've had a few reports that the online EX46 (Beer duty) form is rounding the final amount due differently from Breww. The online duty form is rounding half up to 2 decimal places, whilst Breww is rounding down to 2 decimal places.

Based on HMRC's guidance, we believe their online form is rounding incorrectly, and Breww's figure is correct. According to the two calculation examples in Section 7.7 of Excise duty notice 226, the final amount due should be "rounded down to the nearest penny," i.e. rounded down to 2 decimal places:

This isn't the first rounding issue we've noticed in HMRC's online calculators (the other was the rounding in their online Small Producer Rate calculator), and previously, when we contacted them, they acknowledged and said that they would fix it.

We've contacted them again to clarify whether it is their guidance or their online form which is rounding incorrectly. Once they've confirmed, we can make any necessary changes to ensure your final figure in Breww matches the final figure calculated by HMRC.

Breww is designed to keep track of your duty on all of your products. In Breww, once a product passes duty suspense for the first time, whether this is when you move your stock from a bonded to a non-bonded site or location or when it is dispatched, this point is recorded and stored.

Once a product becomes duty-paid, it is recorded on your beer duty return. If the product is delivered on an order and afterwards returned, it will be returned to Breww as duty-paid stock. This means that if the returned products are sent out on another order, Breww will not account for the duty a second time. If the returned products were lost or spoilt in Breww, then a reclaim will be made on your current return for the duty value paid.

If a product passed duty suspense with draught relief applied and was returned and sent out again without draught relief, then Breww will make an adjustment to reverse the draught relief rate and will make a new entry for the draught relief exclusive rate.