Main customs office

The competent body is not a central office but the main customs office for the district from which the business is run (Section 1a AlkStV). Everything converges there: the application for the authorisation, the setting of the guarantee, the monthly duty return and the annual stock declaration. Inside the office a dedicated unit handles excise duties, and the contacts there stay the same over years.

The role is twofold. The main customs office grants the authorisation and revokes it where fiscal reliability falls away or a guarantee that has been requested is not provided. Alongside that it keeps checking: it orders stocktakes, can require additional records and can extend deadlines on request, for instance the deadline for the report of receipt.

Communication requires registration in the customs portal, because declarations and messages run through it. That step is worth taking early, because the access itself takes time. How long an authorisation or an amendment takes depends on the office and on the quality of the documents submitted; binding start dates are only possible after the premises have been inspected.

The most common error is the wrong office: the enquiry goes to where the goods are stored, while the competent district is the one the business is run from. The enquiry gets forwarded and days are lost that are missing when a deadline applies.

The second error concerns timing. A question asked early costs nothing. A discrepancy that only surfaces during a stocktake feeds into the assessment of fiscal reliability, and the authorisation depends on that.