Tax warehouse (bonded warehouse)

A tax warehouse is created by an authorisation, not by a building. The main customs office grants it to the warehousekeeper on application, and it attaches to that person rather than to the premises (section 5 AlkStG). The application includes a plan of the rooms and areas plus a description of operations setting out how goods are received, moved and booked.

The authorisation brings continuing obligations with it. The warehousekeeper keeps a stock ledger on the official form covering every receipt and every removal (section 10 AlkStV). Every pallet must be traceable there to a document and to a movement, even years later during an audit.

Commercially, the decisive question is timing. Duty only arises on removal from the tax warehouse, unless a further duty suspension arrangement follows (section 18 (2) no. 1 AlkStG). Releasing in partial lots therefore ties up capital only for the bottles that actually reach the market.

The most common misconception is treating storage space as an authorisation. Goods sitting in an ordinary warehouse are duty paid, even if they stay there unsold. The second mistake sits in the records: stock held only in a merchandise management system does not replace the stock ledger.

It gets expensive when book stock and pallet drift apart. If a removal is booked but the goods never left, they count as removed, the duty has arisen, and the bottles are still on the rack. Such gaps often surface only at the stocktake, months after the fact.