WCO Releases 2017 HS Tariff Nomenclature, Recommends Other Tariff Schedule Changes
The World Customs Organization on Oct. 28 released the 2017 version of the Harmonized System (HS) tariff nomenclature, it said (here). The new version (here) will replace the 2012 HS upon implementation by the 154 members of the HS Convention, including the U.S., on Jan. 1, 2017, the WCO said. The 2017 edition includes 242 changes at the six-digit level, the WCO said, including 85 relating to the agricultural sector; 45 to the chemical sector; 22 to the wood sector; 15 to the textile sector; 6 to the base metal sector; 25 to the machinery sector; 18 to the transport sector; and an additional 26 that apply to a variety of other sectors (see 14073002, 14073101, 1607290033 and 1608180038). The WCO also corrected tables correlating the 2012 and 2017 HS (here).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
At its session in July, the WCO Customs Cooperation Council also recommended HS convention members make additional changes (here) to their national tariff schedules “as soon as possible.” Changes include the addition of statistical suffixes for substances controlled under the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction. The new statistical suffixes would be inserted in HS headings 2812, 2903, 2905, 2921, 2922, 2929, 2930, 2931, 2933, 3002 and 3824.
The council also recommended statistical suffixes for goods used in the production of improvised explosive devices be added to subheading 3603 (here). The statistical suffixes would cover safety fuses, detonating fuses, percussion caps, detonating caps, igniters and electric detonators.
Finally, the council requested that HS convention members adopt standard units of quantity for each six-digit subheading, as outlined in an annex (here), for the purpose of reporting trade statistics to the United Nations and other international organizations. “Other units of quantity may be retained or used in statistical nomenclatures for collecting international trade data and for other international purposes,” the WCO said.