On Wednesday 19 April, the European Commission announced the launch of a public consultation on the way excise duty is applied to alcohol.
These rules define product categories and set reduced tax rates and exemptions per product, but the last time they changed was in 1992 and a recent European Commission report recommends clearer tax rules to support small producers and reinforce the battle against dangerous counterfeit alcoholic drinks.
The consultation follows an appeal from European finance ministers, who asked the Commission in December to do the necessary preparatory work for draft legislation. The idea is now to see how the administrative burden can be reduced for companies and member states while avoiding an uneven playing field in the Internal Market.
In the consultation document, the Commission explains that the two classification systems (tax and customs) are not always very clear, particularly regarding products made using production technology that was not in existence in 1992. The Commission explains that this could create incentives for the development of new products that take advantage of ambiguities in the current classification system to pay less tax.
It says that it may be necessary to revise the definitions in EU Directive 92/83/EEC, but this would present new issues, such as the criteria to be used to differentiate among the various products and avoiding unintended changes to the tax system for other products.
The Commission is also considering extending the scope of products for which reduced-rate duty applies and the exemption for denatured alcohol.
The consultation will run until 7 July 2017. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)