Taxes on Alcohol and Alcoholic Beverages

Beer

Beer and products consisting of mixtures of beer with non-alcoholic beverages, in both cases when their alcohol content exceeds 0.5%, are subject to this tax.

For the purposes of the tax, beer is the product classified under the Combined Nomenclature code 2203.

The tax is levied in mainland Spain, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands.

In Beer tax you can benefit from the exemptions common to all manufacturing excise duties and those common to taxes on alcohol and alcoholic beverages.

You can obtain a refund of the amounts paid for beer tax, in the cases of refunds common to all manufacturing excise taxes provided for in article 10 of the Excise Taxes Law and those common to taxes on alcohol and alcoholic beverages provided for in article 22 of the Excise Taxes Law.

The application of exemptions and refunds is subject to compliance with the conditions and requirements established in the regulations governing Excise Duties.

The tax base of the tax is constituted by the volume of product included within the objective scope of the tax, expressed in hectoliters of finished product at a temperature of 20 C .

The applicable tax rates are set out in Article 26 of the Excise Duty Act, and are determined according to the alcohol content and alcoholic strength of the beer.

The regulations governing this tax set out specific management rules, which include, inter alia, the following obligations for beer manufacturers:

• breweries have to be isolated from any other industry where alcohol is used as a raw material
• the different elements of the factory must be capable of being sealed by the Intervention, they must be numbered, and they must have measuring elements to know the volume they contain at any given moment.
• raw materials entering the brewery may not be used for any purpose other than brewing beer.