Spirits Excise

Excise on spirits and equivalent customs duty on imported spirits, is budgeted to raise $2.3 billion in 2018-19, and $9.7 billion over the forward estimates. It is our tenth largest tax.

Spirits excise represents 0.5% of all Commonwealth revenue in 2018-19, and 0.12% of GDP.

Spirits excise is currently (August 2018) levied at two rates – one for all spirits except brandy, and a slightly more concessional rate for brandy. The Table below shows the rates. An equivalent customs duty is levied on imports. The excise is indexed twice yearly in line with movements in the consumer price index. GST of 10% is applied on top of the excise.

Excise Rates for Spirits – 1 August 2018

	All Spirits except Brandy	Brandy
$ per Litre of Pure Alcohol	$84.51	$78.93

You can choose:

• the rate of excise for spirits
• the rate of excise for brandy
• to apply indexation based on the consumer price index or the wage price index, or remove indexation of the excise
• to impose an additional amount of excise each year, expressed as a percentage increase which is added to whatever means of base indexation you choose.

The model does not take account of the impact of changes to spirits excise on GST (a reduction in the excise rate would lower GST collections, and an increase would also increase GST collections), or of any other second round effects.

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