Tax-Free Wine Supply for Yachts

Onshore Cellars is a French company, and wine, Champagne and spirits are excise goods. Every order we deliver falls into one of four tax positions. Which one applies is decided by where the goods physically go and what authorisations the receiver holds — not by the flag of the vessel, the nationality of the owner, or where the invoice is addressed.

Here are all four, exactly as we apply them.

Find your position

A yacht in a refit yard, or a new build still at the yard, is a special case — see Shipyards, refits and temporary suspensions and New builds below.

1. Delivered outside the EU — export

If the delivery address is outside the European Union, the supply is an export: we zero-rate the VAT (Article 146 of the EU VAT Directive; article 262 I of the French CGI) and the goods leave under an export declaration with excise duty relieved. No French VAT, no French duty.

Anything the destination charges on arrival — local VAT, import duty, agency fees — is between the vessel and its agent there. We provide the commercial invoice, packing list and export paperwork.

A few territories are in the EU politically but outside its VAT and excise area, and count as exports too. The Canary Islands is the one that comes up most.

2. Tax-free ship’s stores — the genuine tax-free route

EU law exempts goods supplied as stores to a qualifying commercial vessel (Article 148 of the VAT Directive; article 262 II 2° of the French CGI, with the matching excise relief). This is the only way wine goes on board inside the EU with no VAT and no duty. We still do it — but the conditions are strict, they are checked, and in practice few orders meet them.

All of these must be true

• the vessel is commercially registered, not a private pleasure yacht;
• it employs a permanent crew;
• a valid charter contract is in force and the goods are for consumption during it;
• the vessel leaves port within 48 hours of delivery;
• a customs agent at that port can run the procedure. Not available everywhere — currently not possible in Spain.

What we need, before the order is placed

• ship’s papers showing the vessel is commercially registered;
• the charter contract;
• the crew list;
• a signed and stamped commercial attestation.

Cost, notice and the rules on board

• Customs agents charge from €199, so it is only worth doing when the tax saved clearly exceeds that — roughly €1,020+ on wine and spirits, or €3,620+ on soft drinks.
• We need 48 hours’ notice, and you must tell us at the time of ordering. Tax cannot be reclaimed retrospectively — an order placed normally stays that way.
• Tax-free stores may not be consumed alongside, and we cannot deliver them to a static charter.
• They may not be landed from the vessel unless local taxes are paid to the local authorities first.

Those last two are conditions of the relief, not house rules, and the vessel carries the exposure if they are broken.

3. Inside the EU, business to business — two numbers, not one

For ordinary goods, a valid EU VAT number from another Member State is enough to zero-rate a supply (Article 138 of the VAT Directive; article 262 ter I of the CGI). Alcohol is not ordinary goods. The movement itself must be authorised, separately from the VAT.

Since 13 February 2023, under Directive (EU) 2020/262, a duty-paid commercial movement of alcohol between Member States must travel under an e-SAD in the EU excise movement system (EMCS), from a certified consignor to a certified consignee, both registered for it. The duty-suspended alternative requires the receiver to be an authorised warehousekeeper or registered consignee, moving under an e-AD.

So buying from us B2B inside the EU needs two numbers:

1. a valid EU VAT number, verifiable on VIES; and
2. an excise authorisation number — certified consignee, registered consignee or tax warehouse — valid in the country of delivery.

A VAT number alone does not work. Without an excise authorisation we cannot lawfully move alcohol to you as a business, and the sale is treated under route 4. That is not obstruction: an unauthorised movement of excise goods is our liability as consignor.

If you do not hold those numbers, your agent may. Many yacht agents, shipyards, provisioners and bonded stores hold a certified consignee authorisation or run a tax warehouse. Ask yours in writing for their excise authorisation number and VAT number. If they have them, we deliver to them and they handle the onward movement to the vessel. If they cannot produce an authorisation number, they cannot receive alcohol from us as a business, whatever else they say.

4. Inside the EU, everything else — destination VAT via the One Stop Shop

This covers most yacht deliveries inside the EU. It is the correct treatment, not a fallback.

Where the buyer is a private customer, or a business that cannot receive excise goods commercially, the sale is an intra-EU distance sale. The place of supply is the country of delivery, so we charge that country’s VAT rate rather than the French one, and declare and pay it to that country on our own One Stop Shop (OSS) return. Destination excise duty is settled on our side too.

So an order to a yacht in Italy carries Italian VAT; one delivered in Cyprus carries Cypriot VAT.

Mediterranean and Adriatic destinations

Other EU countries we deliver to

Standard rates in force September 2026; rates do change. Deliveries outside the EU — the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Montenegro, Albania, Turkey, Gibraltar, the Caribbean, the USA, the UAE — are exports, see route 1. If your destination is not listed, ask us. The rate applying to your order is always the one shown on your quote and invoice.

Shipyards, refits and temporary suspensions

Yards often tell crew that deliveries in are “tax free” or “bonded”. Sometimes that is right. Often it is right about the refit and wrong about the wine, so it is worth understanding what these regimes actually are.

A vessel that has not been imported into the EU — typically non-EU owned and registered — can sit in a yard under a customs suspensive procedure: Temporary Admission or Inward Processing, which Spanish yards usually call TPA. While the vessel is under that procedure, import VAT, customs duty and excise on the vessel itself are suspended, and the works carried out on her and the equipment fitted to her can be relieved. The procedure is discharged when she leaves; France and Italy have long accepted departure beyond territorial waters as sufficient, and Spain accepted the same interpretation from September 2021.

Two limits matter for provisions.

• The relief attaches to the works and to equipment incorporated in the vessel. Provisions are consumed, not installed, and consumables generally fall outside the scheme. A yard’s customs procedure is usually no help at all in getting wine on board free of tax.
• Even where it does reach the goods, a customs authorisation is not an excise authorisation. They come from different regimes and different pieces of paper. To receive wine from us free of destination duty and VAT, the yard still needs what route 3 describes — certified consignee, registered consignee or tax warehouse. Plenty of yards hold the first and not the second.

And it is not the same in every country. The customs framework is EU-wide, but how each Member State’s authorities run it — what an individual yard’s authorisation actually covers, whether there is a bonded store on site, how the procedure is discharged, what documentation is accepted — varies by country and in practice by yard. The Balearics and Palma have bonded warehouses; Italian yards routinely carry out works under Temporary Admission; Spanish practice changed in 2021. Do not rely on “we’re a bonded yard” said over the phone.

So ask the yard, in writing, for three things:

1. which customs procedure the vessel is under, and its authorisation or reference number;
2. whether that authorisation covers consumable provisions, not just works and equipment;
3. their excise authorisation number, if they hold one.

Send us the answers and we will tell you exactly what we can do. If the paperwork is there we will use it. If it is not, we will charge destination VAT under route 4 and you will have a clean, correct invoice — which, in a refit, is the document your owner’s accountant will actually want.

One more thing worth knowing: a yacht under Temporary Admission or Inward Processing is a non-EU vessel, so depending on her status and movements the right answer for a delivery may be route 1 or route 2 rather than anything to do with the yard’s own authorisation. Tell us the situation and we will work it out with you.

New builds — stocking the cellar before she launches

A yacht under construction that will leave the EU on delivery is, in customs terms, being exported. So goods supplied into her can sometimes go out with no VAT and no duty under an export procedure — even though the yard is in Germany, the Netherlands or Italy. We have done exactly that, most recently into a German yard.

It is not automatic, and it is not the yard’s decision on its own. In our experience it works when four things are in place.

1. The yacht already has an agent at the yard running the export of EU-sourced items. Yards and their agents describe this as being “set up for export”. On our last German new build, the purser’s answer was that their Hamburg-based agents were assisting with the export of all EU items — which is precisely the answer that makes it possible.
2. That agent speaks to our export and customs partner before the order goes out, so our declaration and theirs match.
3. The goods are presented to a named customs office — not simply dropped at the yard gate. The customs office address is part of the delivery instruction, alongside the yard address.
4. Everything travels on one commercial invoice and packing list supporting the export. Splitting an order across documents at the last minute is what breaks these deliveries.

Allow weeks, not days. On our last German new build the paperwork was being agreed roughly ten weeks before the delivery window, and the launch date moved twice in the meantime. Cellars for new builds are worth starting early for stock reasons anyway; the customs side is a second reason.

And it genuinely differs by country and by yard. We have supplied German yards as exports, and Dutch yards as intra-community supplies against the receiver’s VAT and excise authorisations — two different routes for the same kind of order, because the yard, the agent and the national customs office each work slightly differently. A Dutch, a German and an Italian yard will tell you three slightly different things, and all three can be right about their own country. So we ask rather than assume, every time.

Two cautions carried over from the refit section, because they bite just as hard here. The export has to be our export, properly declared, with proof of exit — a yard telling us it is “all handled” is not a declaration. And the excise side is separate from the VAT: wine and spirits need the movement authorised, whichever VAT route applies.

What to send us for a new build:

• the yard’s name and full delivery address, and the hull or project number;
• the yacht’s agent at the yard, with a name, email and phone number;
• confirmation from that agent that the vessel is set up for the export of EU-sourced items;
• the customs office at which goods must be presented, if there is one;
• the expected launch and handover window, and who will be on board to receive.

If any of that is missing when the order has to go, we will charge destination VAT under route 4 rather than hold the wine or guess. And once she is launched and cruising, she is on route 4 like any other yacht — we have had the same vessel go out of the yard tax free as an export one month, and carry destination VAT on a delivery in the Mediterranean the next. Both were correct.

How we account for it

• VAT. We are registered in France under VAT number FR73811931310. French deliveries go on our French VAT return; deliveries to other Member States go on our quarterly OSS return, which routes each country’s VAT to that country’s tax administration.
• Excise duty. We hold French registered consignee status (destinataire enregistré), movements are declared through EMCS, and duty is declared and paid monthly. Our declarations are filed by our appointed excise representative.

Two things follow. Because we account for the destination VAT ourselves, it must not be paid again to anyone else — not a marina, not an agent, not a local handler. If anyone at the destination asks for the VAT a second time, stop and send it to us first. And we can evidence all of it: if your accountant, management company or a tax authority wants to see how an order was treated, ask and we will send the documentation.

Why we do not simply leave the VAT off

Crew often tell us another supplier “just doesn’t charge it”. Sometimes that supplier has run a proper ship’s stores procedure. Often they have not — and then:

• the tax is still due. It does not disappear because an invoice omitted it, and suppliers assessed years later have been known to come back to their clients for it;
• a supplier not registered for excise movements is moving alcohol without authorisation, which is a customs matter — and the vessel holding the goods is not always comfortably outside it;
• an invoice showing no VAT and citing no legal basis is worth nothing to your owner’s accountant, or to a flag state or auditor asking how the cellar was provisioned.

We would rather quote a correct price with the tax shown, tell you honestly when a tax-free route is open, and stand behind every document we issue.

Things we are asked that do not work

• “We’re a commercial yacht, so it’s all tax free.” Commercial registration is one condition of several, not the whole test.
• “Don’t charge us French VAT, we’re not French.” Agreed — which is why we charge the VAT of the delivery country instead. VAT follows the goods.
• “Here’s our VAT number, zero-rate it.” For alcohol we also need an excise authorisation number. See route 3.
• “The yacht is in transit, so there’s no VAT.” A vessel alongside in an EU marina is not in transit for VAT or excise.
• “We’re in the yard, so it’s bonded.” See above — the yard’s procedure usually covers the works, not the provisions.
• “It’s a new build, so it’s automatically tax free.” It can be, as an export — but only with the agent, the declaration and the customs presentation in place before the order goes out.
• “Send it to our agent, they’ll sort the tax.” Gladly — with their excise authorisation number. Without it, nothing is sorted.
• “There are customs clearance charges to pay this end.” Not on a delivery from France to another EU country. There is no import, so there is no import VAT and no customs duty to clear. Storage, handling, delivery and agency fees can be perfectly genuine — but if you are shown a customs clearance charge on an intra-EU delivery, ask for the customs assessment behind it, with its reference number, before paying. Send it to us and we will look at it with you.
• “Invoice it tax free and we’ll pay the tax locally.” We cannot invoice on a basis that is not the correct one. If local tax genuinely becomes due it is assessed by an authority and evidenced by a document, and we will help you deal with it.
• “Can you credit the VAT now the yacht has left?” No. The treatment is fixed at the time of supply.

Set your account up once

Five minutes at the start of the season saves this conversation later. Send us:

• the vessel’s name and registration, and whether it is commercially or privately registered;
• the invoicing entity and its full address;
• an EU VAT number, if the buying entity has one;
• an excise authorisation number — the vessel’s, the management company’s or the agent’s — if one exists;
• if she is in a yard, the customs procedure she is under and the yard’s authorisation numbers;
• your usual ports, with the name and email of the agent at each.

We will tell you which route each of your destinations falls into, so the tax on a quote is never a surprise — and when a tax-free ship’s stores delivery is genuinely available, we will tell you and run it.

Talk to us

Got an itinerary, a port or a charter and want to know where you stand? Email us with the details. We have provisioned yachts out of France for over a decade, and we would rather spend ten minutes on this before an order than argue about an invoice afterwards.

This page explains how Onshore Cellars treats VAT and excise duty on its own supplies. It is general information, not tax advice. The rules summarised are those in force at the time of writing and they change; your own position, and your owner’s, may turn on facts we are not party to, so take your own professional advice where the amounts matter. Last reviewed September 2026.