UK to Abolish Duty Stamps on Spirits

Those round-shaped magenta discs that, since 2006, have adorned the labels of UK spirits and wine bottles, as a visual proof of duty paid, now look set to disappear, following a government announcement that the discs will be abolished once a review by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has taken place. The announcement also said that legislation will be published later in the year for an orderly wind-down of the scheme.

The spirits industry is, unsurprisingly, delighted by this news. Alan Powell, founder and co-ordinator of the British Distillers Alliance said ‘the announcement follows our intense campaigning for this measure.

In large part, our members were concerned by the lack of clarity in law about duty-stamped empty bottles being re-filled. Members have been stymied by the opacity of law and severe risk for breach of the regulations’.

Powell added: ‘the duty stamps regime introduced in 2006 was purportedly to tackle spirits duty fraud but was always controversial since there was actually no fraud of any significance. In our campaign, started in 2019, we put it to HMRC and ministers that in the early part of this century senior civil servants had totally miscalculated spirits duty losses as a result of fraud’. And it was this miscalculation that led to the adoption of duty stamps.