New Zealand alcohol excise duty

Alcohol Duty & Excise Tax Zaktualizowano 18/08/2026 6 minut czytania

Breww can quickly and accurately calculate alcohol excise duty for New Zealand producers. Whether you produce beer, cider, wine, spirits, RTDs or other beverages, Breww works out the correct EEDT (Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table) excise item, duty rate and Health Promotion Agency levy automatically, and presents your totals in the same shape as your Trade Single Window excise entry.

Running your excise duty report

To run your report for a given period, click the Excise duty tab on the left-hand menu and enter the date range you'd like to report on.

Excise duty rates in New Zealand are CPI-indexed and normally change on the 1st of July each year. A report cannot span a rate change, so if your chosen dates cross one, Breww will ask you to run two separate reports instead - one for each rate period.

Excise entry lines

The main section of the report shows one line per EEDT excise item, in the same column order as a Trade Single Window excise entry:

The excise entry lines section of the New Zealand excise duty report

Excise item and Description - the EEDT Part A item code and its official description.
Supplementary quantity (L) - the total litres of product, to 3 decimal places.
Statistical quantity (LAL) - the total litres of alcohol, to 3 decimal places.
Duty rate and Basis - the rate that applies, and whether it is charged per litre of product or per litre of alcohol.
Excise duty - the excise duty owed for the item.
Levy rate, Alcohol levy and GST on levy - the Health Promotion Agency levy (always charged per litre of product) and the GST on it. GST on the levy is shown separately because it is reclaimable as input tax.
Total duty and levy - the excise duty plus the alcohol levy.

For help completing and submitting the entry itself, see NZ Customs' quick guide to completing excise entries via Trade Single Window.

Duty credit (reclaimable)

If duty-paid product is returned and then lost or spoiled, Breww shows it in the Duty credit (reclaimable) section. New Zealand's excise entry has a dedicated Duty credit field (Customs and Excise Regulations 1996, reg 58), so these quantities are not deducted from the excise entry lines above. To claim them back, enter them in the Duty credit field on your Trade Single Window excise entry.

Breakdown

Beneath the entry lines, the Breakdown section shows the individual drink, container type and ABV combinations that became payable or reclaimable during the period. To see every entry that made up a row, click the View entries button to its right, ensuring your excise reporting is fully and easily auditable.

Each excise entry line is calculated once from the combined quantities for that excise item, rather than by adding together the duty calculated for each breakdown row, so the breakdown figures may differ from the entry line above by small rounding amounts.

Exports and duty-suspended movements

Two further sections are shown for information only, as neither forms part of the excise entry:

Exports - product dispatched for export, which is not a removal for home consumption.
Duty-suspended movements - movements between customs-controlled areas under suspense, which are record-keeping only.

Exporting to Excel

You can export the report to Excel. The export contains a Summary sheet matching the excise entry lines and duty credit sections, and a Breakdown sheet with every payable, duty credit, export and duty-suspended row.

Setting up your drink types for New Zealand duty

When creating or editing a drink type under Settings -> Production settings -> General production settings, select Alcohol excise duty as the duty type. You will then be asked to choose a Duty sub-type, which determines the EEDT excise items Breww files the drink under:

Choosing a duty sub-type when creating a drink type

Duty sub-type	Excise items
Beer	99.10.25F, 99.10.50G
Wine	99.20.20L
Fortified wine	99.20.11A, 99.20.20L
Cider, perry, mead or saké	99.30.21D, 99.30.26E, 99.30.32K, 99.30.47H, 99.30.59A, 99.30.62A
Fruit or vegetable wine	99.30.01K, 99.30.02H, 99.30.03F
RTDs and other spirituous beverages	99.45.72F, 99.45.76J, 99.45.78E, 99.45.80G, 99.45.86F, 99.45.90D
Liqueurs and cordials	99.50.40A, 99.50.50J, 99.50.60F, 99.50.65G, 99.50.76B, 99.50.85A
Brandy	99.45.10F
Whisky	99.45.15G
New Zealand whisky blended with imported whisky	99.45.20C
New Zealand grain ethanol blended with imported whisky	99.45.25D
Rum and tafia	99.45.30L
Gin and Geneva	99.45.35A
Vodka	99.45.40H
Other spirits	99.45.45J

Where a sub-type has multiple excise items, Breww selects the correct one automatically from the ABV. Each spirit type has its own sub-type because the excise item code is what you enter on your Trade Single Window filing, even though the spirit items all share a rate.

Note: Excise item 99.20.11A applies only to wine that is both over 14% ABV and fortified by the addition of spirits. ABV alone cannot determine fortification, so select the Fortified wine sub-type if you fortify your wine. A fortified wine at or below 14% ABV is still filed under 99.20.20L automatically.

Once a drink type has been created, the duty type and sub-type cannot be changed.

How does Breww calculate these totals?

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

If a product 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 product is then marked as lost or spoiled, Breww will add it to the Duty credit (reclaimable) section of your excise duty report.

Depending on the excise item, duty is charged either per litre of product or per litre of alcohol - Breww applies the correct basis automatically and shows it on the report. The Health Promotion Agency levy is always charged per litre of product.

Alcohol-free and low-alcohol product

Alcohol at or below 1.15% ABV is not excisable in New Zealand, so alcohol-free and low-alcohol products are automatically excluded from the report and carry no excise duty.

ABV source

Breww uses the ABV to 2 decimal places for New Zealand excise duty. For non-derived drinks, the ABV is taken from the batch. Depending on your settings, this will either be the drink'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 -> Beer duty settings and set your preferred option beneath Default ABV calculations.

For derived-at-packaging drinks, each batch has its own ABV source setting, which chooses between the drink's advertised ABV and the batch's own ABV.

Does Breww have the excise duty rates built in?

Yes! Breww has the EEDT Part A duty rates and the Health Promotion Agency levy rates built in from the 1st of July 2021 onwards, and will always be kept up to date with the latest rates, so there is no need to enter your excise duty rates into Breww manually.

Product excise duty amounts

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