EU Duty Information

In order to determine the classification of a product, the following guidelines can be used:

• Commission Regulation published annually, amending Annex I to Council Regulation (EEC) No 2658/87 on the tariff and statistical nomenclature and on the Common Customs Tariff. This regulation is commonly known as the “Combined Nomenclature”;
• the “Explanatory Notes to the combined nomenclature of the European Communities”, published annually in the C series of the Official Journal of the European Communities;
• the “Explanatory Notes to the Harmonised Commodity Description and Coding System” published by the World Customs Organisation.

In order to obtain written classification information, it is advised to ask for a “Binding Tariff Information” (BTI) in the country of importation. Since it is the national customs authorities that are responsible for issuing binding tariff information, please send your request to the competent customs authorities of the Member State concerned. The names and addresses of these authorities can be found in the Official Journal of the EC C 351 of 4 December 1999, page 44.
Further information on how to ask for a BTI can be found under the option “databases”, on the web site of the European Commission – DG Taxation and Customs Union, hosted on the Europa Web Site (http://ec.europa.eu/).
The TARIC DDS site allows searching for a product code based on its description. This function does not guarantee that a code retrieved in this way will be accepted by the Customs offices if used in a declaration.

From the DDS Home page, click “TARIC“.
From the DDS-TARIC home page, you can access tariff information via the TARIC code or via the TARIC description.
Via the TARIC code, you can search for the code in an online version of the TARIC publication.

• Click on the “browse” button
• select a section (thus expanding it in chapters)
• select a chapter in the section (thus expanding the chapter in 4 digits codes)
• perform searching via a number of expanding-collapse steps on the browser window
• select a code

Via the TARIC description, you can search for the code via a textual search based on the description of the product.

From the DDS Home page, click on “ECICS”. This brings you to a query screen that allows you to look for the TARIC codes for chemical products. The output of a query can be viewed both on a result list and on a result detail screen.

There are several possible ways to retrieve geographical information:

• search via ISO-code
• search via name
• search via group code
• search via geonomenclature code

The query leads to a screen with the list of results

From the DDS Home page, click on “TARIC”.
Form the DDS-TARIC Home page, you can access tariff information via the TARIC code or via the TARIC description.
To retrieve applicable duty rates, you must enter a TARIC code, an origin/destination country and a simulation date

The objective of the Data Dissemination System (DDS) is to provide member states, customs and traders with up to date tariff related information.  The added value of this system is concentrated in the ability to retrieve up to date tariff information in all Community languages.