The growth of informal economic activity has become a challenge throughout the Latin American region. To address this, the Swiss-Chilean Chamber of Commerce recently held a webinar to discuss the challenges of informality (in employment, government, taxation), as well as the actions that policymakers, in the region and elsewhere, could take to halt an increasing trend resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Europol’s Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2021 (SOCTA-21) provides a detailed account of the dramatic impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on organized crime, illicit markets in general and the illicit tobacco market in the EU in particular.

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An ongoing issue of concern to the tax stamp world has recently resurfaced. It refers to the use of the term ‘tax stamp’ to describe security features that have nothing to do with tax collection.

The European Union represents the world’s first attempt at implementation of wide-scale, multi-country tobacco traceability and the largest iteration of the FCTC Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (the Protocol) in action. The implications in relation to one of the world’s largest tobacco market’s interpretation and implementation of the Protocol, as well as the benefits that traceability can provide in terms of combatting illicit trade, has the significant potential to influence tobacco traceability the world over.

The time has now come for us to be considering the changes that the current pandemic will make to our industry. The purpose of this article is to look at the reshaping of one particular technology with the intention of prompting a similar appraisal of others. It is does not attempt to identify all the solutions but to at least propose a framework for the questions.

A review by Ian Lancaster, project leader for ISO 22382 tax stamp guidance standard.

It may not have been like the in-person seminars we’re all accustomed to, or yearning for, but we were very happy to report that the International Tax Stamp Association (ITSA) webinar for the Latin American region, held on 3 December under the title ‘Illicit Tobacco during Lockdown: Controlling Tobacco in a COVID-19 Context’, drew close to 150 registrants from all over the Spanish-speaking world.

AIPIA, the Active & Intelligent Packaging Industry Association, held its conference on Smart Packaging in mid-September – it’s first ‘Virtual Congress’.

In October, the International Tax Stamp Association (ITSA) wrote to Julio Castilla Peláez, President of the Costa Rican Chamber of Commerce (CCCR), responding to an article in the La Nación newspaper titled ‘Traders reject attempt to revive plan to label and monitor liquor’.