Excise guidelines for duty free shops

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What these Guidelines are about

Relying on these Guidelines

We are committed to providing you with accurate, consistent and clear information to help you understand your rights and entitlements and your obligations.

If you follow our information and it turns out to be incorrect, or it is misleading and you make a mistake as a result, we will take that into account when determining what action, if any, we should take.

Some of the information in these Guidelines applies to a specific financial year. This is clearly marked. Make sure you have the information for the right year before making decisions based on that information.

This guide is intended to be a reference tool for duty free shops to assist operators to meet their Excise obligations. It contains information about the excise system and how it applies to duty free shops.

The guide will provide you with a broad outline of excise law and your compliance obligations - it does not cover every aspect of how excise law applies to every situation.

If this guide does not fully cover your circumstances, please seek help from us or a professional adviser.

You can contact us as follows:

• the Online Services for Business
• phone 1300 137 290
• email at alcohol@ato.gov.au , or
• write to us at

• Australian Taxation Office
• PO Box 3514
• ALBURY NSW 2640

We will ordinarily respond to electronic requests within 15 business days and finalise private rulings within 28 days. If we cannot respond within 28 days, we will contact you within 14 days to obtain more information or negotiate an extended response date.

Terms we use in these Guidelines

The technical terms used in these Guidelines are shown in bold when first used and are explained in Terms we use in these Guidelines . Some of these definitions are from the excise legislation, others are not.

When we say you in these Guidelines, we mean you as a proprietor of a duty free shop, who is either registered or wishes to register for excise.

When we say us or we in these Guidelines, we mean the terms CEO, Collector or Commissioner as used in the excise legislation to refer to various officers.

The information in this publication is current at January 2022.

© AUSTRALIAN TAXATION OFFICE FOR THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA

You are free to copy, adapt, modify, transmit and distribute this material as you wish (but not in any way that suggests the ATO or the Commonwealth endorses you or any of your services or products).