Outputs for April 2024 to March 2025
Updated 24 September 2025
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/annual-outputs-for-tacking-tobacco-smuggling/outputs-for-april-2024-to-march-2025
The government has had a comprehensive strategy to tackle illicit tobacco since 2000. This has been highly effective in reducing the estimated duty gap for cigarettes from 16.9% in 2005 to 2006, to 10.5% in 2023 to 2024. The estimated duty gap for hand-rolling tobacco has reduced substantially (from 65.2% to 22.9%) over the same period.
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) estimates the size of the illicit market using tax gap data, which is reported annually. For more details, read about excise (including alcohol, tobacco and oils) in Measuring tax gaps 2025 edition: tax gap estimates for 2023 to 2024.
HMRC and Border Force published a new strategy for tackling illicit tobacco in January 2024. This sets out our continued commitment to reduce the trade in illicit tobacco, with a focus on both reducing demand for illicit tobacco, and to tackle and disrupt the organised crime groups behind the illicit tobacco trade. For more details, read Stubbing out the problem: A new strategy to tackle illicit tobacco.
This report sets out tobacco strategy outputs delivered for 2024 to 2025.
Cigarette seizures
These are the seizures for April 2024 to March 2025.
| HMRC Overseas | Border Force | HMRC Inland | Totals | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volume (sticks) | 153 million | 927.1 million | 107.7 million | 1.19 billion |
| Revenue value (£) | 82 million | 496.9 million | 57.7 million | 636.6 million |
Case studies
Read about cigarettes worth an estimated £6 million in duty and taxes, seized by HMRC, supported by Police Service of Northern Ireland on mynewsdesk.com - more than 11 million cigarettes seized.
Hand-rolling tobacco seizures
These are the seizures for April 2024 to March 2025.
| HMRC Overseas | Border Force | HMRC Inland | Totals | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volume (kg) | 4,500 | 62,645 | 57,943 | 125,088 |
| Revenue value (£) | 2.4 million | 33.3 million | 30.8 million | 66.4 million |
Case studies
Read about HMRC uncovering encrypted messages tax scam, after 8 million cigarettes (worth more than £2.4 million in evaded duty) were seized by Border Force at Southampton Port, on mynewsdesk.com - Encrypted messages helped snare cigarette smugglers.
Criminal investigations
| April 2024 to March 2025 | |
|---|---|
| Arrests | 215 |
| Positive charging decisions | 211 |
| Convictions | 118 |
During the life of a prosecution case a decision is made as to whether to charge a suspect or not.
Convictions do not necessarily relate to the prosecutions started in this period, since outcomes to case will depend on the time taken for them to be processed through the judicial system.
Civil Sanctions and Duty Assessments
In addition to criminal prosecutions, HMRC uses a range of sanctions and penalties to improve compliance by:
- penalising anyone handling illicit tobacco products
- recovering unpaid duty on seizures made at the border and inland
Following the UK’s departure from the EU, there have been changes to the way HMRC assess and penalise non-duty paid tobacco importations to the UK from the EU.
This has led to:
- a reduction in the value of tobacco products duty assessments issued by HMRC
- an increase in the amount of Customs and Excise civil evasion penalties raised
The figures for these penalties are included here, under ‘Customs and Excise civil evasion penalties’.
Tobacco products duty assessments
| April 2024 to March 2025 | |
|---|---|
| Number of assessments for tobacco products duty issued | 76 |
| Value of tobacco products duty assessments issued | £14,624,040 |
Wrongdoing penalties
| April 2024 to March 2025 | |
|---|---|
| Number of excise wrongdoing penalties issued | 53 |
| Value of excise wrongdoing penalties issued | £234,553 |
Customs and Excise civil evasion penalties
| April 2024 to March 2025 | |
|---|---|
| Number of Customs and Excise civil evasion penalties issued | 1,730 |
| Value of Customs and Excise civil evasion penalties issued | £19,135,054 |
Tobacco Track and Trace penalties
Since October 2023, HMRC has been accepting referrals from Trading Standards, where they find illicit tobacco products which are non-compliant with UK Tobacco Track and Trace regulations.
These referrals resulted in the issue of financial penalties of up to £10,000
For more details, read the Tobacco track and trace penalties guidance.
| April 2024 to March 2025 | |
|---|---|
| Number of Tobacco Track and Trace penalties issued | 70 |
| Value of Tobacco Track and Trace penalties issued | £402,500 |
HMRC multi-agency events
HMRC maintains a good working relationship with a variety of partner agencies to combat the illicit tobacco trade. These include local authority trading standards teams, the police and other government departments.
HMRC works closely with Trading Standards to disrupt the illicit tobacco trade at retail level – known since 2021 as Operation CeCe. In the year 2024/25 this activity has resulted in the seizure of over 23.5 million illicit cigarettes and over 7,000 kilos of illicit hand-rolling tobacco.
We also work internationally to target organised crime groups that manufacture and supply illicit tobacco for the UK market. For example, HMRC collaborated with Poland and Ireland law enforcement colleagues to successfully tackle a significant and longstanding Organised Crime Group (OCG) who had smuggled over 260 million cigarettes to the UK and Ireland. This led to the arrest of the six principal subjects of the crime group in Poland as well as the seizure of several million of Polish currency alongside luxury cars and real estate. HMRC developed and coordinated intelligence and pursued various lines of inquiries to identify Irish and Polish OCGs members, who had been using stolen identities.
Help HMRC tackle tobacco smuggling
To report any kind of excise fraud or tax evasion you can contact HMRC with the information, in confidence.