More Stout Left For Pick-Up By Pint...
Crosswords1 min ago
Can anyone tell me how and when tax and excise duty are paid on items such as cigarettes or petrol.
I have always assumed that this is paid before retail sale, but to be honest it is something I know nothing about.
No best answer has yet been selected by rjkh. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.It's paid by the manufacturer. Hence you see "Duty paid" on certain items. Cigarettes destined for export are shipped duty free and the manufacturers have to keep meticulate records. All a bit silly really as they are then smuggled back and sold by criminals! Item from the National Crime Intelligence Service follows..
The smuggling of cigarettes and hand-rolled tobacco is a worldwide problem. Responsibility for tackling tobacco smuggling in the UK is assigned to HM Customs and Excise, which assesses that cigarette smuggling in 2001-2002 was responsible for �2.7 billion in lost revenue from tax and duty, while a further �580 million was lost as a result of smuggled hand-rolled tobacco. Meanwhile, it is assessed that more than one in five cigarettes smoked in the UK has been smuggled
Thanks for the answers guys.
One thing which slightly puzzles me though. In the example given by Chris, why would the government want to see all that alcohol poured away. Would it not make more sense to keep accurate records of what is traded to wholesale and charge on that? Why should the manufacturers methods of production be an issue?
Or is there a belief that any excess alcohol product would then be traded "under the counter"?
And then could the brewery not simply produce a higher ABV lager, take the alcoholic distillation from that and not inform the authorities of what their original product was?
I really don't know much about the workings of an average brewery so can't really say if this would be feasible.