by Charles Metcalfe
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has released its judgement on the excise duty payable on the import of alcohol and tobacco (and mineral oils, petrol) in cases where the transporting is not done by the person importing the goods. As is already the case, the judgement states that excise duty remains payable in the EU country to which the goods are being imported.
The case was brought by a group of Dutch collectors who have been arranging to have wine transported on their behalf from France to the Netherlands. There is no suggestion that they were doing this for any purpose other than their own personal consumption. The Dutch government had demanded excise duty on these imports, and the group of wine-lovers had appealed to the ECJ. Advocate-General Jacobs had offered an opinion in December 2005 that looked as though it might overturn the status quo, but the ECJ s judgement today upholds the current position. This means that people wishing to import alcoholic drinks, tobacco (and petrol) from EU countries where they are taxed at lower rates have to import them personally. They cannot arrange to have the goods transported on their behalf by another person or transport company.
The UK Treasury, along with Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Sweden, made representations to the ECJ to maintain the current position - and its approximately £15 billion of revenue. Today s ruling will stem the flood of companies waiting to ship cheap cigarettes from Latvia or inexpensive alcohol from any one of a number of European wine-producing countries into other countries such as the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, where excise duty is much higher.
