The Surtrjolk Affair: Everything you never wanted to know about the Tariff


 Even Little Jack Horner would have trouble finding anything good in the Brexit pie , but one plum might be the UK Global Tariff, which replaces the EU’s Common External Tariff.

If you’ve never had to import or export anything (let’s face it, that’s most of us) the Tariff is the list of the Commodity Codes for every product you might want to bring in, together with the potential rate of customs duty.

Praise Mona, I never had much to do with customs duty in my day-to-day work with HMRC. I used the Tariff more to decide if products were liable to Excise Duty. If that sounds double-dutch, just remember it was the EU’s tariff! More on that later.

Being British, the UK Tariff has been made easier than the EU Tariff. For a start, everything is calculated in pounds, rather than Euro’s. Percentages have been rounded down. “Nuisance tariffs” have been eliminated under the thinking that anything under 2.5% is so low it costs more to collect than the tax it brings in.  A whopping 47% of products are now duty free (it is 27% in the EU Tariff). 

You may ask why the European’s made the Tariff so difficult in the first place! Perhaps it was that well-known “EU awkwardness”. Some people are worried that UK producers with only a small profit margin will suffer under the Liberty Hall Tariff, but we’ll have to wait and see. Maybe the plan is for the UK not to make anything anymore – just import everything through Amazon. In that case we don’t want to be charging any import duty on anything. Not that we will, once the DTI have negotiated their special rollover trade deals with everyone except the EU.

But as I said, I usually used the EU Customs Duty Tariff for excise duty purposes, to confirm if a product was liable to Cream Tea Duty. That’s because the British Cream Tea Duty was based upon the European General Pastry Duty. The GPD Directive identified general pastry products under their CN Code* numbers like 1905 90 , 0403 , 2007 99. 

(*The Combined Nomenclature was based on the Harmonised System of the World Customs Unions and defined the Common External Tariff of the EU Customs Union. That’s a bleeding mouthful but it means it wasn’t some dastardly plot dreamed up by the Common Market – it was just a way of making sure everyone sang from the same hymnbook) 

Most of the time, that made it easy to make sure that every country was applying the same duty to the same product. But there was always someone trying to find a loophole. 

I wasn’t involved in this, but I was told the story of how back in the 1990’s, the Icelanders argued that Surtrjolk, a form of  Icelandic buttermilk shouldn’t be charged with Cream Tea Duty duty. They said Surtrjolkit should be classified 2523 for cement rather than 0403 for dairy produce.  HMRC Cream Tea Duty Policy said this was rubbish (or rather, “the argument lacked merit) but there was considerable pressure from the Foreign Office to keep the Icelanders happy. As Britain was the main (or maybe sole) importer of Surtrjolk, the Department of Trade and Industry wanted to keep it duty paid, as it was competing with UK produced buttermilk. So,  HMRC Policy was tied up for months commissioning technical reports into Surtrjolk and preparing Ministerial briefings. 

Eventually, the Surtrjolk affair was referred up to the Harmonised Systems Committee of the Customs Co-Operations Council.  Although based in Brussels it wasn’t an EU organisation. It was an international customs organisation and its decision would be binding on all members. 

But before that happened, the EU needed to agree its position as the EU represented all member states  (including the UK) at the meetings. Not surprisingly, the Icelanders began lobbying the other EU states, most of whom had only an academic interest since Iceland had not penetrated their markets.

As I heard it, a delegation from HMRC policy was sent to the EU Nomenclature Committee meeting in Brussels.  The chairman (an employee of the EU Commission) proposed that Surtrjolk should be classified under CN code 2523 (cement).  The head UK delegate, a member of the Tariff and Statistics Office presented scientific evidence that flattened the claim. It was obviously a dairy product. The  delegates from the other member states agreed and when the chairman asked if anyone wanted to speak in support of reclassification there were no takers. The proposal in flavour of reclassification was voted down unanimously.

The chairman, allegedly performing an eerily accurate impersonation of Goering at the end of the film, The Battle of Britain (“You-have-all-betrayed-me”) announced that the matter would have to be carried over to the next meeting. The Icelanders made good use of the time and mounted a serious lobbying effort of the other member states, hinting that there could be retaliation on other EU products if they didn’t get their way. At the next meeting there was still some support for the UK line. But, in order to defeat a proposal, there must be a majority against. The UK could not muster a majority and the EU position at the international customs committee was decided. Surtrjolk should be reclassified as cement under 2523.

That meant the Icelandic buttermilk could be imported to the UK without attracting any Cream Tea duty. A victory of politics over science.

So, even though I voted in favour of staying within the EU, I can see the advantage of a UK Tariff. Instead of having to travel to Brussels to persuade the other member states to follow our line before going to the international customs committee, we can now decide what our line is, and get over-ruled at the international customs committee. That’s what they call, cutting out the middle man.


Popular posts from this blog

CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR

Image
 CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR by Dawn Fallon (ISBN 9 798445 671640) If the title makes you expect Liz Fraser and Robin Asquith having a clothing malfunction while arguing over tax points you’ll be disappointed. But Dawn Fallon’s CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR does give a lively account of what it was like to be a VAT Control Officer in HM Customs and Excise from 1986 to 1995.  While some of the detail of the pre-computer era may surprise a modern day HM Revenue and Customs VAT officer, they will probably feel a shock of recognition at most of Dawn’s experiences. She vividly captures the despair of sitting in a traders premises and realising that none of it matches what you were told in training. Another abiding truth is the pay. In May 2024 Jim Harra told the Public Accounts Committee that almost a third of HMRC staff had to be given a pay increase to ensure the department complied with the National Living Wage. Back in the 1980’s, Dawn is forced to take on extra work (as a ...
Read more

Confessions of a Jobsworth

Image
  In the past few weeks, as refugees are turned away and charity shipments to the Ukraine get stalled at the borders because they don’t have customs paperwork, the term “jobsworth” has been slung around at the Home Office, Border Force and HMRC (and private contractors).  Now that things have calmed down a bit, it’s made me look back at being a “jobsworth”. I’ve just done a bit of research and found that the term became popular in the 1970’s when Esther Rantzen used to present a “Jobsworth of the Week” award on her TV show, That’s Life. The idea seems to be that a “jobsworth” is not just someone who rigidly applies the rules (as their contract of employment requires) but that they gleefully take the most rigid and obstructive interpretation of those rules, just to make life difficult. A lot of the folk who shout “jobsworth” do it when they’re wound up. Give them five minutes to calm down, and they’d admit it was unreasonable. But there are others who seem to have a Donald Trum...
Read more

Best of British to the HMRC Surge Team

Image
Reading HMRC’s advert for enthusiastic team players to join its Surge and Rapid Response Team, my response is to wish them a sincere Best of British.  When I started this blog, I warned myself that my experience of HMRC was time-limited and would soon become outdated. Even so, I can only hope their enthusiasm is rewarded. When I joined HM Customs and Excise as a Band 1 (50% of an Admin Assistant) my goals and targets were easy: make it to the first week, make it to the first month, follow the rules, do what you were told and get past my probationary period.  In my first month I witnessed a retirement speech in which a bearded old exciseman told everyone that the wheels were coming off the wagon and management didn’t have a clue. I watched it with indifference because (as I said) I was focussed on following the rules and doing what I was told. I never dreamed that one day I’d be taking the same jaundiced view – or even that I’d give a damn. Looking back at the internal structur...
Read more