HM Excise
Unlike HM Customs, the Excise operated inland as well as on the coast: initially it had 39 Collections in England (mostly corresponding with the English Counties) and 4 in Wales; later its remit was extended to cover Scotland and Ireland as well.
[a][2] Each Excise Collector was required to tour his Collection eight times a year, visiting each Market Town in turn in order to hold 'sittings' and receive revenue payments.
In the 1820s, an excise officer (Joseph Pacy) wrote a detailed description of his daily routine, spent visiting a series of different manufacturers and retailers: chandlers, brewers, innkeepers, tanners, maltsters, distillers and tea and tobacco merchants (with substantial amounts of administrative work to be done in the intervening moments).
This new Excise Office in Broad Street was designed by George Dance the Elder and built on the site of Gresham College: it consisted of two ranges, one of stone, the other of brick, with a spacious courtyard laid out between them.
The Excise was now seen as an efficient and effective means of raising revenue and Robert Walpole (as Chancellor of the Exchequer and de facto Prime Minister) sought to make the most of it.
Seven years later he began to explore the possibility of using the Excise to counter problems of fraud and smuggling related to imported goods – particularly wine and tobacco – within the remit of HM Customs.
When he presented his proposals to Parliament in 1733 it prompted a full-blown 'Excise Crisis': there was public frenzy, fuelled by fears that the Bill marked the first stage of a General Excise being imposed on all manner of domestic goods and other articles.
When, however, William Pitt the Younger arrived as Prime Minister, he brought with him a determination to raise revenue more effectively by way of the Excise service.
In 1803 an Act was passed allowing the warehousing of all types of goods liable to Excise duty, and new warehouses were built in ports all round the country.
As part of their response, both services were provided with revenue cutters (sea-going vessels to help them patrol the nation's coastal waters).
[3] Also in 1825 the somewhat anomalous situation whereby import duties (on coffee, cocoa, tobacco, wine and spirits) were collected by the Excise Office came to an end, with responsibility for these being handed back to HM Customs.
)[11] In 1830, Sir Henry Parnell published an influential treatise On Financial Reform, which argued for the repeal of duties on the raw materials for building and manufacturing (including those on bricks, tiles, leather and hemp) in order to encourage manufacturing, the repeal of duties on items otherwise involved in manufacturing processes (including those on coal, glass, candles and soap) and the reduction of excise duty on wine and tobacco (in order to discourage smuggling); in order to counterbalance these proposed reductions Parnell argued for the (re-)introduction of taxes on property and on income (i.e. direct, rather than indirect, taxes).
Where excise duties remained in place (e.g. on spirits, malt, soap and paper) the requirement for officers to monitor the manufacturing process was reduced.
Before long, plans were being drawn up to merge the much-reduced department with the Board of Stamps and Taxes (itself formed from a recent amalgamation).
