WORLD
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published a new standard on excise tax stamps: ISO 22382:2018 - Security and resilience - authenticity, integrity, and trust for products and documents - guidelines for the content, security, issuance and examination of excise tax stamps.*
Tax stamps are now becoming even more critical as an additional security feature on consumer goods, particularly on tobacco products where global, regional and national efforts are being introduced to better control tobacco and improve public health by reducing tobacco consumption. The World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the EU’s tobacco products directive (TPD) are examples of structured international or regional strategies in which tax stamps can play a significant role.
The purpose of this new ISO standard is to assist tax authorities to improve compliance with excise tax regulations by providing guidance on tax stamp procurement, construction, security, issuance, and examination. The standard sets out best practice in these areas, explaining that tax authorities should regard their tax stamps as a highly secured and protected document, integrated and supported by systems and examination procedures that all contribute to establishing an effective and efficient excise tax collection regime.
Ian Lancaster, co-founder and former managing director of Reconnaissance International, “Tax stamps have the potential to make a very significant contribution to public health and government revenues. We know that counterfeit and other illicit excisable goods not only deprive governments of tax revenues but can kill or cause serious health problems to consumers. A secure tax stamp makes it much more difficult for the criminals who target taxed products.”
“Our aim in creating this standard is to help tax authorities to achieve the best in their tax stamps – to make them secure and well-protected, so they, in turn, protect the goods on which they are applied and the public buying them.”
“Given this, I and all members of ISO’s TC 292 encourage all tax authorities to adopt this standard for guidance on their tax stamp programs to ensure that their tax stamps deliver protection to the public as well as increased tax revenues.”