Breww will automatically calculate whether you qualify for Small Producer Relief and your reduced rates based on the production volumes you enter in Beer duty → Annual estimate & settings. Unlike the old Small Brewers Relief, the new regime doesn’t use the total hL of beer produced in the previous calendar year. Instead, a production year is now the 12 months from the 1st of February until the 31st of January the following year, and it is based on the total hL of alcohol produced in the previous production year, only including products produced that are over 1.2% ABV.
It is possible to enter these figures into Breww now, and we recommend entering them before the 1st of February each year, as they will be required before you can dispatch any orders from then.
You can easily get this figure from Breww’s Total volume packaged report in Reporting → Pre-built Production & inventory report (or you can also navigate to it from Beer duty → View → Total packaged report).
This report allows you to filter your final packaged volumes by the key information affecting your alcohol production total for the purposes of Small Producers Relief. These include allowing you to include only products over a certain ABV (e.g. over 1.2% ABV), only include batches with a certain duty payment option on them (e.g. were they produced under your licence or not), and an option to remove lost or spoiled volumes that were destroyed before leaving the excise duty point (which Section 57(3)(a) of the draft legislation states can be removed from your production total).
Hi
On the Beer Produced(Rackings) report, I can’t see how to export that data.
Can you explain how this is done? I was expecting an “Export” button, but can’t see one.
Thanks
Hi Bob, thanks for your comment! It sounds like you are using the Beer produced (rackings) report in the Raw data explorer rather than the Aggregate data report builder. If so, the ‘Beer produced (rackings)’ report in the raw data explorer has an Output option, where you can choose to Display on-screen or Export to Excel (see screenshot below). If you select ‘Export to Excel’ and then run the report, this should export the report for you. If you are using the Beer produced (rackings) report in the aggregate data report builder, there is instead an ‘Export to Excel’ button under ‘Run report’. Let me know if you need any more help with this. Cheers! Ben
you might add initial_product.name to the “Fields to view” if you’re using the raw data explorer “Beer produced (rackings)”. You’ll also probably want to filter by a date range in the BrewwQL box if you go that way…
Hello!
Just trying to fully understand this (and forgive me if I am missing the obvious) - is the duty we pay based on the actual production this year or the estimate for next year?
If it’s the latter, are we then better to enter a conservative estimate such that we don’t overpay for beer that we never actually brew (if we end up below forecasts)?
Are the duty rates a full sliding scale or change in increments of 5?
Thanks,
Lewis.
Hi Lewis, thanks for your comment (and Jon, for your response to this)! Yes, reiterating the two bullet points in Jon’s response, the important thing to note is that both the hL of pure alcohol produced the previous year and the hL of pure alcohol you reasonably expect to produce in the current year will both contribute to SPR eligibility! As long as you are entering your figures correctly in Breww, we are confident that your duty will be correctly calculated. Cheers!
What number does Breww calculate our payable rate from? Again I may be understanding it wrong but the SPR is a sliding scale, I believe, so we pay more depending on how much we make.
If Breww uses the estimated number for the year ahead we enter could we then potentially pay more than needed if we fall short of our estimate?
Or is it our actual production to 31/01/24 (in which case, if it’s a sliding scale, we’d be better delaying any production until 01/02/24 to save us some marginal beer duty from 01/02/24 to 31/01/25)?
I’m sure it’s all covered in Breww but I just want to understand.
I’m sure Breww uses the correct figure - which would be last years production (if you have a figure for last year) or your estimate for this year (if you haven’t - in the case of a new start-up).
Hi Lewis, thanks for your reply, and no problem! The calculation for your duty rate is based on the previous year. However, to qualify for Small Producer Relief, you must meet the “production limit condition”, which specifies that neither “the alcohol production amount for the previous year” nor “the estimated alcohol production amount for the current year” exceeds the “small production limit” (which is 4,500 hL of alcohol). If you were to enter a figure over 4,500hL of pure alcohol as your estimate, then this would mean that you don’t qualify for SPR, and therefore this would influence your duty rates. If your estimate entered is below 4,500hL, then this won’t affect your duty rate, and your rate will be calculated on the actual alcohol production amount for the previous year, not the estimated alcohol production amount. So it’s just an extra condition that they place on qualifying for Small Producer Relief. This is unless you do not have an actual production amount for the previous your, as Jon has mentioned with start-up breweries. This scenario would mean it would be based on your estimate for this year. Cheers!
