A new book titled Customs & Excises in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Customs & Excises has been written by regular Engineering News & Mining Weekly contributor Riaan de Lange and has been published by Wolters Kluwer Law.

De Lange says the book challenges the fallacy that the customs and excises environment is not susceptible to a coherent summary.

However, he acknowledges that the topic continues to be shrouded in mystery, largely owing to the inconsistency in the use of its terminology, its application, and ignorance.

“The primary challenge is that its applied terminology is not unique or subject-specific. As a consequence, it tends to be erroneously read, interpreted, and understood for its linguistic meaning rather than for its specific customs and excises meaning.

“Another more critical oversight is that customs and excises are inherently about economics, and founded on the principles of economics,” De Lange explains.

The book, he says, provides a roadmap to help readers navigate their way through the customs and excises cornerstones, concepts, methodologies, and procedures, while also providing a customs optimisation process.

“The art of Customs and Excises consists of not merely accepting the terminology for its linguistic meaning; it consists of ensuring that the terminology, its context, its meaning, and its effective, efficient, and compliant application are fully understood, and appreciated, in both its reference and application,” De Lange says.

As the scope of customs and excises is so broad, the book focuses solely on goods or merchandise and also seeks to distil the topic down to a single lesson and then apply that lesson.

Key topics explored in the book include:

• identifying the Customs and Excises cornerstones, their application to trade remedies, as well as various types of duties, taxes, levies, tariff barriers, non-tariff measures and non-tariff barriers;
• categorising and organising the special customs procedures;
• depicting the trade blocs and their respective stages of economic integration;
• providing insight into the International Commercial Terms and their evolution;
• reflecting on denied party screening and sanctions screening;
• offering insight into the international organisations, agreements, conventions, standards, and frameworks, as well as the more relevant acronyms and terms; and
• detailing the ‘In a minute’ Customs and Excises Series, which offers a succinct summation of the more pertinent customs and excises concepts.

The book is geared towards customs and excises compliance practitioners, trade compliance practitioners, students and young professionals who are in the early stages of understanding the nuances of Customs and Excises.

However, De Lange says it also seek to inform tax practitioners, in-house tax counsel, academics working in international organisations, business executives, advisory firms, and government officials, for whom it may not be a specialisation but who are interested in gaining an understanding, or even a working knowledge of its intricacies and foundation.