Excise Officer

Introduction

Excise officers examine business accounts and collect excise duties on manufactured and imported goods, brewing, and gaming and betting. Officers deal with traders within a geographical area.

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Work Activities

Excise officers check and collect a tax that the government puts on goods such as alcohol, tobacco and petrol, and on betting and gaming activities such as the use of bingo and fruit machines. They have responsibility for traders within a geographical area.

Breweries, bookmakers, bingo halls, distilleries, and clubs and pubs with gaming machines all have to pay excise duty. Excise officers spend most of their time visiting traders to make sure that they are paying the right amount of excise duty. They draw up a list of premises they have to visit and decide which traders need checking most often.

Officers may deal with taxes which are aimed at protecting the environment such as landfill tax.

Some excise officers work in mobile units. They can stop commercial vehicles and test fuel to make sure that they are not using excise-free fuel that is meant for industrial use.

Excise officers visit inland clearance depots and the premises of large-scale importers to check that the documentation of imported goods is correct. They may search for illegally imported material such as drugs. Traders may apply to have goods that they are exporting cleared by local excise officers rather than at the port.

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Personal Qualities and Skills

As an excise officer, you must have good communication skills to relate well to a very broad range of people. You need to be observant and well organised.

The ability to remain calm is important; there may be times when you will have to deal with conflict.

Excise officers collect duties on manufactured and imported goods. They also collect statistics (for example, on the number of traders that they have visited over a certain period), so you must have good numerical skills.

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Pay and Opportunities

Salaries vary, depending on role and responsibilities.

The pay rates given below are approximate.

Excise officers earn in the range of £19,500 - £29,000 a year, rising to around £24,500 - £35,500 a year. Senior officers earn around £32,000 - £41,000 a year. Fast Stream entrant salaries start around £24,000 a year, rising to around £39,000 after four years.

Excise officers usually work between 36-42 hours, based around 9:00 am - 5:00 pm, Monday to Friday, but may be required to work shifts, evenings and weekends, depending on their duties.

About 95,000 people work for HM Revenue and Customs, in more than 290 locations throughout the UK. Competition for all posts is fierce.

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Adult Opportunities

It is illegal for any organisation to set age limits for entry to employment, education or training, unless they can show there is a real need to have these limits.

If you do not have the academic entry requirements to enter at administrative assistant level (Standard Grades in English and Maths at grade 3 or above), you may be able to take a test instead. This option will be mentioned on the advertisement if it is available. Many regions only recruit at administrative assistant level, so entrants would need to work their way up to officer level.

• 3% of people in occupations such as excise officer work part-time.
• 28% have flexible hours.

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