Every five years in Brussels, the World Customs Organisation (WCO) releases their general review of the Harmonised Commodity Description and Coding System (Harmonised System or HS). That quinquennial event has come round again with an updated system from 1 January 2022.

The International Convention on the Harmonised Commodity Description and Coding System (HS Convention) serves as a basis for the Tariff schedules of more than 200 countries around the world. And yet it isn’t a Tariff. The HS Nomenclature is simply a set of tables that provide the uniform classification of goods traded internationally. 


The HS Nomenclature covers Chapter, Heading and Subheading, taking the HS code to six digits. Our own government adds a further two digits for exports and four digits for imports, to make up our UK Trade Tariff commodity codes. These extra digits are used to create and maintain Duty Tariffs, Domestic Taxes, Trade Policies, Rules of Origin, Monitoring of Controlled Goods and Price Monitoring.
 
And because new goods are appearing on the global market all the time, the HS Nomenclature needs to keep pace with this changing world, and the five-year review is a way of doing just that.

For example, novel tobacco and nicotine-based products do not appear in HS 2017, but they now have a place in the new 2022 version.
 
For example, drones (UAVs) do not appear in HS 2017, but they will have their own separate headings in the 2022 version.
 
As mentioned in our introduction, the HS review is a quinquennial event, the last one having taken place in 2017. So, from 1 January 2022 we can expect many changes to our own UK Trade Tariff, which of course takes the commodity codes form the HS Nomenclature.
 
HMRC has indicated that it will publish full details of the changes in early December. In the meantime, the 6-digit correlation tables can be accessed on the WCO website here:

Table I - Correlating the 2022 version to the 2017 version
 
TABLE II - Correlating the 2017 version to the 2022 version
 
In addition, the full HS Nomenclature 2022 edition can be accessed on the WCO website here:
 
HS Nomenclature 2022 edition

Useful links in relation to this months' Spotlight On....

Clinic - HS2022 Live Clinic
S&H has divided the 21 Sections of the HS into 3 specific clinics. The clinics are divided into related Sections of the tariff as follows:

CLINIC HS2022/1 9:00 to 10:30 – covering Sections 1 to 7 which includes animal and vegetable products, prepared foodstuffs and beverages, mineral products, products of chemical or allied industries and articles of rubber and plastic.

CLINIC HS2022/2 11.00 to 12.30 – covering Sections 8 to 14 which includes leather, wood, stone and articles thereof, textiles and textile articles, footwear, ceramic products, glass and glassware and precious or semi-precious stones and jewellery.
 

CLINIC HS2022/3 14.00 to 15.30 – covering Sections 15-21 which mainly includes machinery and mechanical appliances, vehicles, aircraft and vessels, measuring and checking apparatus, arms and ammunition, along with miscellaneous manufactured articles such as toys and works of art.

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