Alcohol duty

⚠ Duty is charged on the pure alcohol in a drink, not on the drink. A litre of 40% spirits contains 0.4 litres of alcohol, and that is what the rate is applied to.

Which is why strength matters more than size

Working from the bottle alone makes every answer wrong by a factor of the strength. A 700ml bottle of 40% spirits carries more duty than a 750ml bottle of 12% wine, despite being the smaller bottle, because it holds more than twice the alcohol.

It also means a small reduction in strength cuts the duty proportionately — which is the whole point of the system, and why so many products now sit just under a band edge.

⚠ VAT is charged on the duty

Duty is part of the price before VAT is worked out, so every pound of duty costs the buyer the standard rate on top of it again. Quoting duty alone understates what it adds to a shelf price by a fifth, and this page shows both.

The bands are not one ladder

Categories diverge at 3.5% and converge again at 8.5%. Still cider at 5% is charged at less than half the rate of wine at 5% — and sparkling cider changes again at 5.5%, where still cider does not. There is no formula that gets all of them right, which is why every band here is stored and checked against the cell it came from.

What this does not cover

Draught relief, which cuts the rate substantially on containers of 20 litres or more that are sold on draught — the reason a pint in a pub carries less duty than the same beer in a can. Small producer relief, which scales with annual production. Duty on imports and the arrangements for holding goods in a warehouse before duty is due. Northern Ireland, where some rules differ. And the retailer's own margin, which is usually a larger part of the price than the duty is.

Where these figures come from

Every rate above is read from a dated rate file rather than written into the page, and each one is checked against the gov.uk page it came from. How these numbers are kept right sets out the whole process.

Tobacco duty calculator