Guidance

Excise visits — CC/FS16

Updated 20 March 2026

Excise visits

This factsheet tells you about visits to your business premises as part of a compliance check into excise matters. A visit can help us complete the check more quickly and effectively.

We visit you if you’re involved, or appear to be involved in:

• buying, selling, importing, exporting, dealing in or handling of excise goods
• providing services which are liable to excise duty

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

Why we carry out visits

We carry out visits to inspect excise goods and any items linked to those goods or relevant services. We do this to make sure:

• excise controls and laws are being operated correctly
• the right amount of excise duty is paid or reclaimed at the right time

We don’t have to tell you we’re coming to visit you.

Allowing us to carry out an inspection

You must allow us to carry out an inspection. If you don’t, we may:

• withdraw any approval we’ve given you
• prosecute you

You have the right to seek advice, but we won’t delay carrying out our inspection while you do this.

During the visit

We will:

• explain why we are visiting and what we want to see
• not enter the parts of the premises used as your home, unless you invite us to
• inspect excise goods and any items linked to those goods or relevant services
• take reasonable action to inspect any part of the premises used for excise goods or services — it doesn’t matter if you don’t own or occupy the premises
• inspect documents or ask for information relating to the excise goods or services

You must open places, for example storerooms, so we can check for any goods or items. We may mark goods, documents or items to show we’ve inspected them.

We can inspect any documents relating to the business. This includes information held on computers or data storage devices.

You must give us any documents or information we ask for relating to the excise goods or services.

If you do not provide the information or documents we ask for, we may charge you a penalty.

We have the right to remove any records. If we do we’ll:

• give you a receipt
• keep the records secure
• return them to you as soon as we can

If you need them back sooner, we’ll make copies and give these to you.

Asking other people for information

Sometimes we may need to ask other people for information about you. If we do this, we won’t reveal any more about you than is necessary to get the information we need. We’ll only ask for information relevant to excise goods or services.

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 is not true, whether 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 our 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’.

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 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’.

Compliance checks this factsheet relates to

This factsheet relates to compliance checks for the following:

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

More information online about compliance checks

Go to www.gov.uk/hmrc/tax-compliance-support for more information and help online. This includes:

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

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 of our letter 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.

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.