One Month Left to Submit Your Paper for Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum

Work has now begun on the programme for the next Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum™, which will take place from 7-9 April 2025, in Cape Town, South Africa.

To this end, we invite revenue authorities, solution providers, NGOs, academics and industry experts who would like to present at the Forum to submit a 200-word abstract on a subject of their choice to [email protected], or use the form at https://taxstamptraceabilityforum. com/call-for-papers/.

The deadline to submit your abstract is 29 November 2024, so please don’t delay.

We also welcome ideas on topics you may like to see covered by other speakers at this year’s event.

To get the ball rolling, some topics and questions that are currently top of mind include:

• Regulations and initiatives like the EU’s Digital Product Passport and its recently released recommendations for combatting counterfeiting seem to be steering us further and further away from using physical security features to authenticate products and documents. What should we, as an industry, be doing about this?
• Many countries that are party to the FCTC Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products had until September 2023 to implement secure track and trace systems on tobacco products. That date has now passed by, and still many parties have not implemented track and trace. Why is this and what more can we be doing to help these countries?
• We want to hear from inspectors in the field as to the challenges they face when investigating suspect products and operations. How do they authenticate products? What devices do they use and which security features do they prefer? Most of us assume smartphones are widely used by inspectors to read codes and authenticate products, but is this really the case?
• How are solution providers incorporating new, and potentially disruptive technologies like blockchain, IoT, AI, augmented reality, biometrics and drones into their offering?
• Another question for solution providers: how are you integrating your specific solutions for tax stamps and track and trace into a broader tax and customs administration platform?