HMRA2020 – General information: What is our registration and approval policy for applicants applying for specific alcohol based excise regime approval?

Where the law provides us the discretion to decide, only suitable applications – so called ‘fit and proper’ persons – to carry on an excise business should be approved.

There is always a potential revenue risk in allowing persons to trade in excise duty suspension goods, or EU goods received without UK duty charged on them. The potential revenue risk in applications must be established and considered before any approval is sanctioned. Our policy is to robustly challenge all new applications for:

• excise warehouse premises approval;
• distillery licences;
• warehousekeeper WOWGR registration;
• owner WOWGR registration;
• duty representatives WOWGR registration; and
• registered excise dealers and shippers approval.

For these traders, the law provides us with the discretion and power to:

• decide whether or not to approve/licence/register; and
• place, where necessary, specific conditions and/or restrictions on the approval/registration to address specific risk.