Not only is it the end of yet another calendar year, but in the winemaking world this time of the year also tends to coincide with the “end” of the winemaking life cycle. That end I refer to is the completion of alcoholic (& for some wines malo-lactic) fermentation of the most recent vintage’s finished wines. US wineries do you know how that translates onto your most common required TTB report, the Report of wine premise operations? 

Most US wineries qualify to file this required report on an annual basis, which means they must submit it to the TTB by January 15th of each year, reporting the previous year’s numbers. There are two requirements that  a winery must meet in order to qualify to file this report on an annual basis. The first is related to your ongoing gallon amounts that sit at your winery site throughout the year. You can have up to 20,000 gallons of wine sitting in tanks, barrels, drums, etc at your winery site and you meet the first qualification. (I should also mention that if your winery stores “in bond” cased wines at your site then you need to include their gallons in that number. “In bond” refers to wines that have not had TTB excise taxes paid)

The second qualification for annual submission of this TTB report is that your winery also must qualify (& does) file an annual TTB Excise tax report. In order to qualify to file the TTB excise tax report on an annual basis you can owe no more than $1,000 in excise tax payments for a year’s worth of your wine shipments. By the way your winery can ship up to about 630 cases of over 14% wine per year and you’d be within this $1,000 total excise tax bill amount. I based that calculation using the small producer’s tax credit amount, which means I deducted 0.90 cents per gallon off the full TTB excise tax rate. (This case amount would be higher if some of your wines are below the 14% alcohol level)

Once you’ve determined that your winery meets both qualifications to submit the Report of wine premise operations on an annual basis the next suggestion to be aware of and sign up for is online filing of the report via the TTB’s Pay.gov site. This is their electronic platform which any winery can use to file both this report as well as file and pay their TTB excise tax reports. A winery representative must apply to set up an account, and that person must also have either signing authority or power of attorney with the TTB offices.

Here is a link to some more information on annual, quarterly and monthly reporting requirements as well as further information on completing the TTB Report of wine premise operations.         TTB Reporting

Confused or concerned about your winery’s reporting?  You’re a candidate for one of my “Compliance check in” calls!    

 Sign up for one here:       Compliance Check In

 

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