We are delighted that the Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum™ will be returning next year and that the tax stamp community will be able to gather together once again, in person, after what seems like a very long time.

The International Tax Stamp Association (ITSA) is being increasingly recognised by government revenue departments as an authoritative body of experts on tax stamp and traceability solutions for excise products.

In July, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) held a webinar on the benefits of track and trace systems as tools in tobacco tax administration, as well as the best practices for implementing such systems.

The recent news that Nigeria is considering the introduction of excise tax on telecommunication airtime charges, in a bid to raise additional revenues, has prompted stakeholders to question whether excise taxes are actually appropriate for this sector.

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.