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Relationship with TARIC

This section is not part of the standard

The content in this section is only included to help explain the standard, provide examples or make recommendations about use.

It does not contain requirements for complying with the standard and is not governed by the formal standards process.

The information may not have been updated to accurately reflect Government policy.

The Tarif Intégré Communautaire (Integrated Tariff of the European Communities, shortened to TARIC) is the Import and Export Tariff of the European Union. The EU produces a TARIC data standard to which its own tariff data conforms. The TARIC data and standard are used by EU Member States to apply a consistent set of trading rules across the entire bloc.

This standard is dervied from and compatible with the EU’s TARIC3 standard. The data structures and formats are mostly identical and data produced to this standard is also valid TARIC3. Any system designed around TARIC3 data can also use data conforming to this standard.

Differences from TARIC3

This standard differs from TARIC3 in the following high-level areas:

  • Regulations are simplified. Only the base regulation records are used and EU-specific fields such as Official Journal numbers are not populated. UK-specific information is included in other fields instead. Other regulation records are maintained for historical data and compatibility.
  • Some fields that previously only allowed alphabet or numeral characters have had their format expanded to include both alphabet and numeral characters.
  • Some extra validity rules have been added to more tightly constrain data. For example, in most cases descriptions are no longer allowed to be blank or missing.
  • Languages other than English are possible to represent but are not used.
  • A number of features are no longer used, such as publication sigles, exchange rates, nomenclature groups and geographical group parents.

These changes only apply to data valid from 1st January 2021. Data prior to this date was authored by the EU and conforms to its model.