Guidance

General information about compliance checks into excise matters

Updated 21 March 2026

This factsheet tells you about compliance checks into excise matters. A compliance check allows us to check all matters relating to excise duty are correct.

This factsheet is one of a series. For the full list, go to GOV.UK and search ‘HMRC compliance checks factsheets’.

If you need extra support

If you have any health or personal circumstances that may make it difficult for you to deal with us, please tell the officer who contacted you. They’ll help you in whatever way they can. For more information about this, go to GOV.UK and search ‘get help from HMRC if you need extra support’.

You can also ask someone else to deal with us on your behalf. For example, a professional adviser, friend or relative. However, we may still need to talk or write to you directly about some things. If we need to write to you, we’ll send a copy to the person you’ve asked us to deal with. If we need to talk to you, they can be with you when we do, if you prefer.

More information online about compliance checks

Go to GOV.UK and search ‘Get help if HMRC contacts you about a compliance check’ for more information and help online. This includes:

• links to our video series
• step-by-step guides to our compliance checks

During the compliance check

When we start the check, we’ll tell you what we need from you.

This may include:

• visiting your business premises to inspect goods and documents relating to excise matters
• visiting your business premises to ask for information about excise goods or activities you provide, or intend to provide
• visiting your business premises to check you’re complying with the terms of any excise approval, registration, authorisation or license you may hold
• asking you for information or documents about excise goods, activities, or any excise related approval, registration, authorisation or license

If we cannot agree, or if you don’t help us, we may use our legal powers to get what we need.

If we give you an information or inspection notice, you cannot ignore it. However, you do have certain safeguards when we use our legal powers.

You can speak to the officer who’s dealing with the check if you:

• aren’t sure why we’re asking for something
• cannot do what we ask
• think something we’ve asked for is unreasonable or not relevant to the check
• have any other questions at any stage of the check

If we visit you, you must allow us entry to your business premises. If we’re visiting your business premises, the officer dealing with the check may give you a copy of factsheet CC/FS16, ‘Excise visits’. This factsheet tells you about our visit. We’ll normally only visit you at home if you run your business from there or if excise goods are stored there.

If you need more time

If we’ve asked you to do something and you need more time, please tell us. We may agree to allow extra time if there’s a good reason. For example, if you’re seriously ill or someone close to you has died.

The benefits of helping us with the compliance check

If you help us with the compliance check, we can:

• complete it quickly and reduce any inconvenience to you
• reduce the amount of any penalty we charge you if we find there’s something wrong

If we find something wrong, we’ll work with you to put it right. We’ll tell you if you need to pay any:

• additional excise duty
• penalties

If we’re considering charging you a penalty, we’ll look at how much help you’ve given us during the check. We call this the ‘quality of disclosure’ or ‘telling, helping and giving’.

We measure the quality of disclosure by considering how much:

• you tell us about what’s wrong
• help you give us to work out what’s wrong
• access you give us to the information or documents we need to complete the check

There are ways you can help us with the check. However, if you choose not to, this will affect how we view the quality of disclosure. For example, if we ask:

• to visit your business premises to inspect your business records and assets, or to carry out a valuation, but you don’t let us
• for information or documents, but you don’t give us everything we’ve asked for

How to get the maximum penalty reduction if something is wrong

If there’s something wrong and you do everything you can to help us, we’ll reduce the penalty by the maximum amount possible.

If you know or suspect there’s something wrong, to get the maximum reduction, you must:

• tell us everything you know about it straight away
• help us to work out the right amount of tax

If we find something wrong that you didn’t know about, to get the maximum reduction, you must:

• have given us all the help needed until we found something wrong
• tell the officer everything about it straightaway
• let the officer see any records they ask for
• help the officer work out the right amount of tax

We won’t give you the maximum penalty reduction if you took a long time before telling us about anything that’s wrong.

For more information about penalties, go to GOV.UK and search ‘HMRC compliance checks factsheets’ then select ‘Penalties’.

If you think we should stop the compliance check

If you think we should stop the check, you first need to tell us why. If we don’t agree, you may be able to ask the independent tribunal that deals with tax matters to decide if we should stop it.

If something is wrong

If we find something wrong, we’ll:

• explain why it’s wrong, and work with you to put it right
• tell you how to stop it happening again, where possible

We may also look at other areas as part of our check  relating to excise matters. If we believe you haven’t paid the correct amount of excise duty, we can:

• send you a demand for the duty due
• seize the goods, or items connected with them

We may charge you a penalty, amend approvals with additional conditions or in serious cases may revoke any approvals granted by us. We can do this if you have an excise:

• approval
• registration
• authorisation
• license

During a check, the officer won’t usually have time to look at all your records and may not spot every error in your accounts. You must not take it to mean at the end of any check that you’re accounting for all taxes and duties correctly.

About the penalties we may charge

You may have to pay a penalty if you’ve:

• supplied certain excise products knowing they’ll be used in a way that results in an additional amount of duty being due
• used certain excise products for a purpose that results in an additional amount of duty being due - this is called ‘misuse’
• not registered for an excise duty on time
• sent us an inaccurate return or document
• handled goods where there is unpaid excise duty and where that duty hasn’t been deferred in agreement with us

Handling goods means being involved in the carrying, removing, depositing or keeping of them. This includes taking possession or otherwise dealing with them.

If you’ve deliberately done something wrong

We may carry out a criminal investigation and prosecute you if you’ve deliberately done something wrong. For example, if you’ve:

• given us information you know isn’t true, verbally or in a document
• dishonestly misrepresented how much tax you owe, or claimed payments you’re not entitled to

Managing serious defaulters

If you deliberately got your tax affairs wrong, and we find this during the check, we may monitor your tax affairs more closely. We have an enhanced monitoring programme called ‘managing serious defaulters’. For more information, read our factsheet CC/FS14, ‘Managing serious defaulters’. To get this factsheet, go to GOV.UK and search ‘CC/FS14’.

Publishing details of deliberate defaulters

We may publish your details if you deliberately got your tax affairs wrong. However, we won’t do this if we’ve given you the maximum penalty reduction. For more information, read our factsheet CC/FS13, ‘Publishing details of deliberate defaulters’. To get this factsheet go to GOV.UK and search ‘CC/FS13’.

What happens at the end of the compliance check

When we’ve completed the check, we’ll send you one or more ‘decision notices’.

A decision notice can be:

• an assessment, or amendment to an assessment
• a penalty notice, if a penalty is due
• a letter explaining the final position

If you cannot pay what you owe

If you think you may have problems paying, you should tell the officer dealing with the check straightaway.

If you disagree

If there’s something you don’t agree with, please tell us.

If we make a decision that you can appeal against, we’ll write to you about the decision and tell you what to do if you disagree. You’ll usually have 3 options. You can:

• send new information to the officer dealing with the check and ask them to take it into account
• have your case reviewed by an HMRC officer who hasn’t been involved in the matter
• arrange for an independent tribunal to hear your appeal and decide the matter

You must do this within 30 days of the date of our letter. For more information about appeals, go to GOV.UK and search ‘disagree with a tax decision or penalty’.

Your principal rights and obligations

You have:

• the right to be represented — you can authorise anyone to act on your behalf
• an obligation to take reasonable care to get things right — if you have an adviser, you must still take reasonable care to make sure that any returns, documents or details they send us on your behalf are correct

The ‘HMRC Charter’ explains what you can expect from us and what we expect from you. For more information, go to GOV.UK and search ‘HMRC Charter’.

Your rights if we’re considering penalties

We’ll tell you if there’s something wrong and we’re considering penalties. To find out what rights you have when we consider penalties, read our factsheet CC/FS9, ‘The Human Rights Act and penalties’. To get this factsheet, go to GOV.UK and search ‘CC/FS9’.

Authorising a representative

If you have a representative, you can ask us to deal directly with them during the check. We’ll only give them details of the check if it relates to taxes that you’ve authorised us to contact them about.

If you want to authorise a:

• professional tax adviser, ask them to give you an authorisation form to complete and send to us
• friend or relative, write to us and tell us who you want to authorise and what you want them to deal with on your behalf

Use of Open Source material during a compliance check

We may observe, monitor, record and retain internet data which is available to anyone. This is known as ‘Open Source’ material. It includes news reports, internet sites, Companies House and Land Registry records, blogs and social networking sites where no privacy settings have been applied.

Compliance checks this factsheet relates to

This factsheet relates to compliance checks for the following:

Air Passenger Duty	Lottery Duty
Alcoholic Products	Machine Games Duty
Amusement Machine Licence Duty	Plastic Packaging Tax (from 1 April 2022)
Bingo Duty	Pool Betting Duty
Excise Duties (Holding and Movements)	Remote Gaming Duty
Gaming Duty	Soft Drinks Industry Levy
General Betting Duty	Tobacco Products Duty
Hydrocarbon Oils Duty	Vaping Products Duty
Vaping Duty Stamps Scheme

Additional information

Our privacy notice

Our privacy notice sets out the standards that you can expect from us when we ask for information or hold information about you. Go to GOV.UK and search ‘HMRC Privacy Notice’.

If you’re not happy with our service

If you’re not happy with our service tell the person or office you’ve been dealing with. They’ll try to put things right. If you’re still not happy, they’ll tell you how to make a formal complaint.