Dutch beer excise duty (bieraccijns)

Alcohol Duty & Excise Tax Mis à jour 18/08/2026 6 min de lecture

Breww can quickly and accurately calculate Dutch beer excise duty (bieraccijns) for you. As long as you tell Breww everything that happens (production, packaging, deliveries, losses, etc), Breww works out your taxable quantities automatically and presents your totals per alcohol percentage, in the same shape as the excise return you file with the Belastingdienst (Douane).

Running your excise duty report

To run your report for a given period, click the Accijns tab on the left-hand menu, enter the date range you'd like to report on (Startdatum and Einddatum) and click Rapport uitvoeren (Run report). If you have more than one site duty group, you'll also be asked which one to report on.

The Accijns reporting page, with the Startdatum, Einddatum and Site duty group fields and the Rapport uitvoeren button

The start and end dates must fall within the same calendar year, because the rate that applies to you is decided per calendar year from your previous year's production (see below). Breww also needs an annual production total covering the period before it can run the report. If one is missing, the report will tell you and point you to your excise duty settings.

Totals (Totalen)

The Totalen card presents your figures in the same layout as the excise return, so you can copy them straight across. It has three parts:

Te betalen totalen (payable totals) - one row per alcohol percentage (Alcoholvolumepercentage), with the total volume in litres (Hoeveelheid), the names of the beers included in that row (Uw kenmerk) and the excise amount for the row (Accijnsbedrag).
Terugwinbaar totalen (reclaimable totals) - laid out the same way, for duty-paid beer that was subsequently lost, spoiled or destroyed and can be reclaimed.
Samenvatting (summary) - the payable total, the reclaimable total and the net Totaal bedrag aan accijnzen (total excise amount) for the period.

The Totalen card of the Dutch excise duty report, showing the Te betalen totalen table with a row per alcohol percentage, the empty Terugwinbaar totalen table and the Samenvatting

Breww follows the Belastingdienst's rounding rules when building these rows:

The ABV of each beer is truncated (rounded down) to 1 decimal place, and beers are grouped by that truncated ABV.
Volumes are totalled in hectolitres to 2 decimal places, then shown in litres, as the return asks for litres.
The excise amount for each alcohol percentage row is rounded down to a whole euro, matching the online return. Hover over the amount to see the unrounded figure it was rounded down from.

Breakdown (Uitsplitsing)

Beneath the totals, the Uitsplitsing card shows the individual beer (Bier), container type (Type container) and ABV (%) combinations that make up the payable and reclaimable totals, along with the total quantity (Totale hoeveelheid), total litres (Totaal aantal liters), the rate applied (Beoordeel) and the excise amount (Accijnsbedrag) for each row. To see every entry that made up a row, click the eye (View entries) button to its right, ensuring your excise reporting is fully and easily auditable.

The Uitsplitsing card of the Dutch excise duty report, showing the Te betalen totalen table with a row per beer, container type and ABV, and the View entries button on the right of each row

Each row of the Totalen card is calculated from the combined, rounded volume for that alcohol percentage, rather than by adding together the breakdown rows, so the breakdown figures may differ from the totals by small rounding amounts.

Exporting to Excel

You can export the report to Excel using the Export to Excel button at the top of the results (Resultaten) card. The export contains a Summary sheet with the totals per alcohol percentage (Alcoholvolumepercentage, Hoeveelheid (L), Uw kenmerk and Excise amount, with reclaimable rows shown as negatives), a Breakdown sheet with every payable and reclaimable row, and an All entries sheet listing each individual movement behind the figures.

Setting up your drink types for Dutch beer duty

When creating or editing a drink type under Settings -> Production settings -> General production settings, select Accijns as the tax type (Type belasting). Breweries based in the Netherlands will have their Bier drink type set up this way automatically.

The Maak een nieuw type drank aan dialog, with the Type belasting field set to Accijns

Once a drink type has been created, the tax type cannot be changed.

Annual production totals

Dutch beer duty has a reduced rate for smaller breweries, decided by how much beer you produced in the previous calendar year. For Breww to apply the correct rate, you need to enter your annual production totals in Settings -> Accijns instellingen (excise duty settings), beneath Productievolumes. Each year, Breww will ask you for your actual beer production for the previous calendar year and your estimated production for the current year, in hectolitres.

The Productievolumes section of the Accijns instellingen page, with fields for last year's actual beer production volume and this year's estimate in hL

If a production total covering a date is missing, Breww will let you know that it cannot calculate the duty amount for that date until it has been entered.

How does Breww determine when duty becomes payable?

Breww will determine that beer has become duty-payable when it is either dispatched as part of a delivery that is not for export or under duty suspension, or it is moved to a Non-bonded location.

Beer dispatched on a delivery marked as an export or as duty suspended does not become payable and is not included in the payable totals. Movements between your own bonded locations also stay under duty suspension.

If beer is returned from a delivery, it will remain Duty-paid and so will not be added to your excise duty report next time it is dispatched. If duty-paid beer is then marked as lost, spoiled or destroyed, Breww will add it to the Terugwinbaar totalen (reclaimable totals) section of your report.

Alcohol-free and low-alcohol beer

Beer with an alcohol content of 0.5% ABV or below is not subject to beer excise duty in the Netherlands (it falls under consumption tax instead), so it is automatically excluded from the report and carries no duty. This uses the same truncated ABV as the report, so a beer at 0.55% ABV is treated as 0.5% and is exempt.

ABV source

Breww uses the ABV truncated to 1 decimal place for Dutch beer duty. For non-derived beers, the ABV is taken from the batch. Depending on your settings, this will either be the beer's advertised ABV, the measured ABV of the batch (based on gravity readings), or a manually entered ABV. To choose which ABV source you'd like to use, go to Settings -> Accijns instellingen and set your preferred option beneath the default ABV calculation for duty purposes.

For derived-at-packaging beers, each batch has its own ABV source setting, which chooses between the beer's own ABV and the batch's ABV. The default for new batches is set beneath the derived at packaging ABV settings on the same page.

Duty rates and the reduced rate for smaller breweries

Breww has the Dutch beer excise duty rates built in and keeps them up to date, so there is no need to enter duty rates manually. Duty is charged per hectolitre for each percentage point of alcohol, subject to a minimum rate per hectolitre for very low-strength beer, and Breww applies whichever is higher automatically.

Breweries whose beer production in the previous calendar year did not exceed 200,000 hectolitres qualify for the reduced small-brewery rate. Breww chooses between the standard and reduced rate purely from the previous year's production total you enter in your Accijns instellingen. Breww does not check whether your brewery meets any other conditions for the reduced rate, so it remains your responsibility to confirm you qualify.

Product excise duty amounts

Breww also calculates the nominal excise duty amount on each of your products automatically, using the product's ABV, container size and the rate that applies to your brewery for the year. This is the amount used when, for example, duty-free pricing removes duty from a customer's prices.