Revised Tariff from 1 January 2022

Every five years the World Customs Organization (WCO) revises the Harmonized System (HS) to improve it and accommodate advances in technology, environmental and social issues that are of global concern and require enhanced monitoring, and changes in the patterns of world trade. The latest edition of the HS, which is due to take effect from 1 January 2022 has been released.

New Zealand is a signatory to the HS Convention, and is obliged to incorporate the Amendments in the Tariff of New Zealand. A project team, drawn from Customs and Statistics New Zealand, has been working to incorporate the amendments and draft legislation to ensure that the 2022 Tariff will be ready for use on 1 January 2022.

It is important to note that the changes to the Tariff are structural only and do not change the rates of duty.

A reprint of the Tariff of New Zealand is now available.

The Correlation Key correlating the 2017 Tariff with the 2022 Tariff is now available.

Summary of major changes

New tariff items have been created for:

• the identification and monitoring of goods that are of importance to the food security programme of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations; these goods include flours/meals/pellets of fish, crustaceans, molluscs and other aquatic invertebrate, edible insects, certain varieties of mushrooms, pine nuts, bark of African cherry;
• products intended for inhalation without combustion containing tobacco, reconstituted tobacco, nicotine or substitutes and other nicotine products;
• specific chemicals, which will facilitate the monitoring and control of dual use goods, products controlled by various international conventions including the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Rotterdam Convention;
• the monitoring and control of fentanyls and their derivatives;
• various medical products, which includes placebos and blinded clinical trial kits for recognised clinical trials, cell therapy products and certain dual use items;
• the monitoring and control of goods required for the production and use of improvised explosive devices;
• flat panel display modules;
• electronic waste and scrap;
• unmanned aircraft;
• the monitoring and control of antiques and cultural articles to counter illicit trade and trafficking; and
• changes in trade patterns due to obsolete trade (e.g. answer phones), technological developments (e.g. solar energy products, smartphones, LEDs) and new technologies (e.g. 3D printers).

A full list of the changes to the HS Nomenclature is available from the WCO website.

Part II Concessions

At the same time, some concessions have also changed so they match with the new tariff numbers. Concessions that are aligned with affected tariff items will be removed and replaced with different concession numbers. No current concessions have been removed, but they will have different concession numbers.

The Correlation Table is available to download and shows the old concession numbers and what the new concession numbers will be under the updated tariff. 

The new concession numbers will also be on the Approvals Notice advertised on the Tariff Concession Notices webpage under Notice number 50 2021.

For any queries, please contact:

• Service Delivery 
• Trade Assurance 
• VOC (for rulings, concession interpretation)

Consequential amendments to the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duty Table

As a result of the changes to the Tariff, the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (the Table) is also amended (on 1 January 2022) to accommodate changes to the structure of chapter 24 relating to products containing tobacco, reconstituted tobacco, nicotine or substitutes and other nicotine products.

The HS2022 revision did not change the excise or excise-equivalent duty rates.

The revised Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table is available to download.

Note: the Table also includes changes arising from the annual indexation process regarding excise and excise-equivalent duty rates for tobacco related products.

Consequential amendments to the Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Levy

As a result of the changes to the Tariff, the Climate Change (Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Levies) Regulations 2013 are also amended (on 1 January 2022) to accommodate changes to tariff items that are subject to a levy.

The HS2022 revision is structural only and does not change the rates of the levy.  

Consequential amendments to Rules of Origin regulations under Part 6, Customs and Excise Regulations 1996

Product specific rules of origin cite the tariff nomenclature and are revised accordingly to reflect the HS2022 nomenclature.