Alcohol Duty Review: call for evidence

The government committed at Budget 2020 to undertake a review of the alcohol duty system. This area of policy was previously harmonised by EU law. Now that the UK has left the EU, the UK is free to set its own law in this area.

The Alcohol Duty Review aims to improve the current system to make it simpler, more economically rational and less administratively burdensome on businesses and HMRC. This call for evidence seeks views from respondents on how well the current system works (both for the individual duties and as a system as a whole), and also looks at whether:

• the method of alcohol taxation should be standardised
• the duty categories should be changed or unified
• products should be consistently distinguished by their strength
• distinctions should be made based on the place of retail
• small producer reliefs should be extended or standardised
• duties could be uprated for inflation in a more consistent manner
• a single process for approvals, declarations and payments should be introduced
• more could be done to tackle avoidance and evasion of duty