E-Commerce Technical Specs Draft Moving to Next Steps

The World Customs Organization Permanent Technical Committee approved a draft of e-commerce technical specifications to be reviewed with the Policy Commission in June and the WCO Council soon after, said Ana Hinojosa, WCO director-compliance and facilitation. Hinojosa spoke via video at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America's annual conference last week. Discussions on e-commerce also are planned with the World Trade Organization, she said. "They have invited us to participate in some of their workshops and we're very interested in us to engage in their process as well," she said. "We're hopeful that those conversations will be fruitful and something will come out of that." Customs and Border Protection believes "work needs to continue" on the e-commerce standards, said Brenda Smith, CBP executive assistant commissioner-trade. "We believe that a lot of the work by countries that rely on collection of a value added tax has driven a lot of the requirements in the WCO's technical appendices and documents," said Smith. “We think that we ought to take a little bit more time" to ensure the implementation documents "allow for and support safety and security in the e-commerce environment." A May 2-3 WCO conference on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System will look at “how complicated it is, whether there's a way to update and revise it in a way that makes it more user-friendly and actually drives more uniform implementation of it," Hinojosa said. CBP will also be at the meeting, said Smith.