Delivered in the Netherlands
Springbank 15 years old
- Volume
- 0,70 L
- Strength
- 46% ABV
- Dutch rate per litre of pure alcohol
- € 18,27
0,70 × 46% × € 18,27
€ 5,88
Excise duties
A tax on what is in the bottle,
not on what you paid for it
Excise duty is the least popular line on any whisky invoice, and the most misunderstood. It is not our fee, it is not related to the hammer price, and it is not something either of us can decline: it is a tax on alcohol, charged by the country the bottle ends up in.
What we can do is make it predictable. This page explains where it comes from, shows the rate for every country we ship to, and gives you a calculator so you can work out the duty on a specific bottle before you bid on it.
A tax on the alcohol
Volume × strength × rate
Your country sets it
We only collect and pay it
Nothing to do with the price
A rare bottle is taxed like any other
No VAT on top of it
A tax is not taxed again
Where it comes from
Not our fee,
and not our rate either
We collect excise duty, declare it and hand it over to the authorities. Not a cent of it stays with us, and we have no more say in the rate than you do.
Explaining somebody else's tax is not the most glamorous page on a whisky site. It is here because the alternative is a buyer meeting the number for the first time at checkout and quite reasonably wondering what on earth it is.
- What excise duty is A tax on alcohol
-
A duty levied on certain goods — alcohol, tobacco, fuel — entirely separately from VAT. For spirits it is charged on the pure alcohol a bottle contains, so a strong whisky costs more in duty than a weak one of the same size, and a half bottle costs half of what a full one does.
It has to be paid before a bottle can lawfully be sold or drunk, and every country sets its own rate. That single fact is the root of nearly everything else on this page.
- Why it is charged again EU Directive 2020/262
-
Excise is due in the country where the alcohol is actually consumed. Ship a bottle from the Netherlands to Germany or Poland and, in the eyes of the law, a new delivery has taken place in a new country — so duty falls due there, at that country's rate.
The distillery may well have paid duty decades ago. Proving that to a customs authority, for a bottle that has since passed through several private hands, is another matter entirely, and it is not proof they accept.
- Why even inside the Netherlands The chain has to be unbroken
-
We can only skip the duty on a Dutch delivery if we can demonstrate that it has already been paid and that the bottle never left the regular commercial supply chain. For auction bottles that have sat in collections for twenty years, that is almost never demonstrable.
So Dutch customs require us to pay it, and we charge it on. It applies to bottles collected in person at our office just as it does to bottles we send out.
- What it is not Not a percentage of the price
-
Duty takes no interest whatsoever in what a bottle made at auction. A forty-euro blend and a four-thousand-euro single cask of the same size and strength attract exactly the same amount, to the cent.
That cuts both ways. On an expensive bottle the duty is a rounding error; on a cheap one it can be a meaningful share of what you paid, and it is worth checking before you bid rather than after.
The arithmetic
Three numbers,
and one of them is yours
Take the volume of the bottle in litres, multiply it by the strength, and multiply that by the rate for the destination country. What comes out is the duty. There is no scale, no threshold and no discount for buying several.
Shipped to Poland
Glenlivet 1977, 35 years old
- Volume
- 0,70 L
- Strength
- 55,3% ABV
- Polish rate per litre of pure alcohol
- € 22,38
0,70 × 55,3% × € 22,38
€ 8,66
Note what is missing from both sums: the price. Excise duty is calculated purely on the liquid and its strength, so a rare bottle is taxed exactly like an ordinary one of the same size and proof.
On top of the duty itself we charge € 0,50 per bottle for declaring and paying it to the authorities on your behalf. That is our entire involvement in it, financially speaking.
Work it out yourself
The duty on
your bottle, right now
Choose the country the bottle is going to, then set the volume and the strength to match the lot you are looking at. The figure updates as you drag, and it is the same calculation we will put on your invoice.
Rates are listed for the countries inside the European Union that we ship to. Outside the EU, duty is settled by the customs authority where the parcel lands rather than through us.
Rate per litre of pure alcohol, for
Netherlands
€ 18,27
Macallan 1991 Sherry Oak
0,375 litre · 43,0% ABV
€ 2,95
Karuizawa 1990
0,700 litre · 56,1% ABV
€ 7,17
Your own bottle
Set the volume and the strength to match the lot you are looking at. Drag, type, or pick a standard size.
litres
% ABV
ABV
US proof
UK proof
Proof means two different things depending on who printed the label. American bottles use twice the alcohol by volume, so 100 proof is 50%. British proof, used here until 1980, runs on a different scale: 100° is 57,1%, which is why a Glenfarclas 105 is 60% and a 1970s bottling marked 70° proof is an ordinary 40%.
Excise duty on this bottle
€ 5,50
On top of this we charge € 0,50 per bottle for declaring the duty and paying it to the authorities on your behalf. Excise duty itself carries no VAT.
One caveat. We keep these rates as current as we can, but they are set by national governments and can change at any time, occasionally overnight. Treat the result as a reliable estimate rather than a quotation — no rights can be derived from it.
Rates per country
The same whisky,
taxed twenty different ways
Every member state sets its own rate, and the spread across the Union is wider than most people expect. The right-hand column puts the difference in plain money: what a standard bottle of forty per cent whisky costs in duty, country by country.
Inside the EU only
These rates apply to deliveries within the European Union. For anywhere else, duty and import taxes are handled by the customs authority of the destination and collected there, not by us.
No VAT on duty
Excise duty does not carry VAT. It is a tax in its own right and is not taxed a second time, so the figure in the table is the figure on your invoice.
Our handling fee
We add € 0,50 per bottle for reporting the duty and paying it to the local authorities on your behalf. That is the only part of this page that is actually ours.
| Country |
Rate per litre pure alcohol |
One bottle 0,7 L at 40% ABV |
|---|---|---|
Austria
|
€ 12,00 | € 3,36 |
Belgium
|
€ 29,93 | € 8,38 |
Bulgaria
|
€ 5,62 | € 1,57 |
Croatia
|
€ 7,96 | € 2,23 |
Cyprus
|
€ 9,57 | € 2,68 |
Czech Republic
|
€ 15,47 | € 4,33 |
Denmark
|
€ 20,11 | € 5,63 |
Estonia
|
€ 20,74 | € 5,81 |
Finland
|
€ 55,50 | € 15,54 |
France
|
€ 18,99 | € 5,32 |
Germany
|
€ 13,03 | € 3,65 |
Greece
|
€ 24,50 | € 6,86 |
Hungary
|
€ 14,81 | € 4,15 |
Ireland
|
€ 42,57 | € 11,92 |
Italy
|
€ 10,36 | € 2,90 |
Latvia
|
€ 18,62 | € 5,21 |
Lithuania
|
€ 27,78 | € 7,78 |
Luxembourg
|
€ 11,23 | € 3,14 |
Malta
|
€ 13,60 | € 3,81 |
Netherlands
|
€ 18,27 | € 5,12 |
Poland
|
€ 18,65 | € 5,22 |
Portugal
|
€ 16,03 | € 4,49 |
Romania
|
€ 9,71 | € 2,72 |
Slovakia
|
€ 14,90 | € 4,17 |
Slovenia
|
€ 13,20 | € 3,70 |
Spain
|
€ 9,59 | € 2,69 |
Sweden
|
€ 46,57 | € 13,04 |
After you have won
When the duty falls due
depends on what you do next
Win a lot and you have four choices: have it sent, come and get it, leave it with us, or put it straight back into a future auction. Each one is treated differently for duty, and the differences are not intuitive.
The short version: duty follows the bottle out of the building. As long as it is still standing on our shelf, nothing is due — and which rate applies when it does leave depends on how it leaves.
- Have it shipped The destination rate
-
For a shipment inside the European Union we charge the excise duty of the country it is going to, per bottle, at the rate in the table above. It is settled through us, declared by us, and appears as its own line on your invoice.
Outside the EU there is no Dutch duty to pay. Whatever your own customs authority charges on arrival is between you and them, and it is collected before the parcel is handed over.
- Collect it in person Always the Dutch rate
-
A bottle picked up here carries Dutch excise duty, regardless of where you live or where you are driving it afterwards. Germany, Denmark, anywhere — the Dutch rate is the one that applies.
The reasoning is customs rather than ours. The moment the bottle leaves our premises it has entered the Dutch economic area, and nobody at the door can establish whether it stays in the country or crosses a border in your boot. Since that cannot be proved either way, it is declared and paid at the Dutch rate.
There is no shipping to pay and no insurance to consider, but the duty is unavoidable. If your own country's rate is lower, having the bottle shipped is often the cheaper way home — the calculator above will show you both figures.
- Leave it in storage No duty while it is with us
-
A bottle in our storage has not been delivered to anybody, and it has not left the building. No excise duty is charged for as long as it sits there — storage does not trigger it, and letting your wins accumulate costs you nothing in duty.
Change your mind halfway through and relist it: still nothing to pay. The duty simply moves to whoever buys it next, and it becomes their decision at their rate. A bottle you are undecided about can wait in storage and go back into a catalogue without any duty ever having been settled on it.
The charge arrives when the bottle finally leaves us, and which rate it leaves at depends on how. Collect it yourself and it is the Dutch rate, for the customs reason above. Have it shipped to an address inside the EU and it is the rate of that destination.
- Put it back into auction No duty at all
-
Relist a bottle into a scheduled future auction and no excise duty is charged, because nothing has been delivered to anybody. The bottle simply stays where it is and goes back into the catalogue.
Whoever wins it next pays the duty, at their own rate, when they decide what to do with it. For a bottle you are undecided about, relisting is the cheapest form of patience there is.
Questions about excise duty
What people ask,
usually with some feeling
Nobody enjoys this tax, ourselves included — it is administration we would rather not do. If a charge on your invoice does not match what the calculator told you, ask us and we will show you the working.
Why am I paying duty on a bottle that was taxed forty years ago?
Because duty is owed in the country where the alcohol is consumed, and a bottle that crosses a border counts as a fresh delivery there. That is European law rather than a policy of ours.
The distillery may indeed have paid it once, in another country, decades ago. Proving that to a customs officer for a bottle that has since passed through several private collections is not something anybody can do, and unproven does not mean exempt.
I live in the Netherlands. Why is there duty on a domestic delivery?
We can only leave it off if we can show that duty has already been paid and that the bottle has stayed inside the regular commercial supply chain throughout. Auction bottles almost never have that history.
So Dutch customs treat the bottle as untaxed, we pay the duty, and it appears on your invoice. It applies equally to bottles collected in person at our office.
Is the duty higher on an expensive bottle?
No. Value plays no part in the calculation whatsoever. Duty is volume multiplied by strength multiplied by the rate, so a four-thousand-euro single cask and a forty-euro blend of the same size and proof pay the same to the cent.
Strength is what moves the number. A cask-strength bottle at sixty per cent carries around half as much again as the same bottle at forty.
Do I pay VAT on the excise duty as well?
No. Excise duty does not carry VAT, so there is no tax charged on the tax. The figure in the rate table and in the calculator is the figure that reaches your invoice.
VAT does apply to our own fees for members inside the European Union — the commission, the shipping, the handling charge — but never to the duty itself.
I am outside the EU. Does any of this apply to me?
Not this duty, no. Bottles leaving the European Union do so without Dutch excise, and whatever your own country charges on import is collected there by customs or by the carrier acting for them.
Those charges can be considerable and we have no visibility of them at all. Looking them up before you bid is time well spent, because they arrive at the door rather than at checkout.
Do I pay duty on a bottle I leave in storage?
No. A bottle in storage has not been delivered to anybody and has not left our building, so no excise duty is due for as long as it stays there. Storage is not a taxable event, and letting your wins pile up over two or three auctions costs you nothing in duty.
Decide during that period to put it back into an auction and there is still nothing to pay: the duty passes to whoever buys it next, at their rate. It only falls due when the bottle actually leaves us — the Dutch rate if you collect it, the destination rate if we ship it somewhere else in the EU.
Can I avoid the duty by relisting the bottle?
You can defer it, which amounts to the same thing while the bottle stays with us. A lot put back into a scheduled auction has not been delivered to anyone, so no duty is charged and none is owed.
The next buyer picks it up at their own rate, whenever they decide what to do with the bottle. Nothing is being dodged here — the tax simply follows the whisky.
When exactly is the duty charged, then?
At the moment the bottle leaves us, and not before. It appears on the invoice for the shipment, or on the one you settle when you come to collect — never on a storage invoice and never while a lot is waiting to be relisted.
Which rate lands on that invoice is decided by the destination. Shipped inside the EU, it is the rate of the country it is going to. Collected here, it is the Dutch rate, because a bottle carried out of our door has entered the Dutch economic area whatever you intend to do with it afterwards. Shipped outside the EU, no Dutch duty is charged at all.
How current are the rates on this page?
We keep them up to date as best we can, and they come from the same table our invoices use — so the calculator and your bill cannot disagree.
They are still national tax rates, and governments change those when it suits them, sometimes at very short notice. Treat the result as a firm estimate rather than a quotation.
What is the € 0,50 per bottle for?
Declaring the duty and paying it. Every bottle has to be reported individually to the right authority in the right country, with its volume and its strength, and somebody here has to do that.
It is a flat amount per bottle rather than a percentage, and it is the only part of the excise line on your invoice that we keep.
