15 Years and Counting – Part 4

It was 15 years ago, in July 2009, that the very first Tax Stamp News™ (now called Tax Stamp & Traceability News™) was published. To mark the occasion, we thought it would be interesting to go back in time, to the main news items covered by the newsletter between 2009 and today, and how they have developed over this period.

We’ve split the coverage into groups of two to three years per issue, starting with 2009-2011 in the July edition. This month, we turn our attention to 2017-2019.

2017

• The six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE – have intensified efforts to increase non-oil revenues as part of a major shift in tax policy, which includes the introduction of excise tax on tobacco and sugary drinks. In order to administer these new tax regimes, the UAE has established a federal tax authority, which is a first for this country.
• March 2017 marks the launch of Mozambique’s new tobacco tax stamp programme, to be shortly followed by alcohol stamps.
• The National Seeds Institute of Argentina, a government body responsible for certifying the quality and identity of seeds for Argentine farmers, has released a new fiscal stamp with secure 2D barcode and physical security features. The stamps are required to be attached to bags of certified hybrid soybean seeds.
• Chile has enacted new legislation requiring the implementation of a traceability system for tobacco products. The system will consist of a unique identifier applied directly to the product or via a tax stamp, as well as the identification and counting of cigarette packs, using external equipment installed on production lines, and the secure transfer of production data to the Chilean tax authority.
• Following a meeting of the ISO technical committee and working group responsible for drafting the ISO tax stamp standard, the standard has now changed its number from 19998 to 22382. This is because the new(ish) technical committee (called Security and resilience) has been assigned a new range of numbers for its standards, following the 223xx sequence.
• The European Commission directorate responsible for implementing the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) has presented its preferred policy options for traceability and security features. However, these may not spell good news for third party providers and anti-tobacco groups, warns the International Tax Stamp Association (ITSA). This is because the Commission appears to be allowing the tobacco industry more control over the operation of the unique identifier required for traceability than that permissible under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
• In September, ITSA called a meeting in Brussels with EU government officials and tobacco control groups to share concerns over the draft implementing acts of the traceability and security requirements of the EU TPD. Specifically, ITSA believes the acts give no guarantee of independence from the tobacco industry, do not provide for strong authentication tools to counter illicit trade, and do not allow for a completely interoperable track and trace system based on open standards.