Legislative purpose: the unwritten criterion in classifying goods

The use of the ‘legislative purpose’ criterion in the classification of goods (i.e. whether the product should be taxed or not) leads to a lack of uniformity and undermines the principle underlying the HS Convention. Therefore, it is proposed to minimize the use of the ‘legislative purpose’ criterion and to return to the traditional classification rules of the World Customs Organization Harmonized System Convention. The article below is a short version of the full article, which has been published in the World Customs Journal, 2024, Issue 18(2). Publication of the short version with a reference to the full version was approved by the WCJ.