Tax stamps - or excise stamps, duty stamps, tax seals, banderols – are important: as a means of revenue generation for governments, as a method of combating counterfeit goods, and as business for printers and component suppliers. There are now more than 140 billion produced each year. Yet there has been little, to date, in the way of authoritative data on the field, nor much opportunity for exchange of views by those involved.

Tax Stamp News aims to breach that gap by providing news, information and analysis with the frequency that this fast-moving sector requires, via this newsletter and the related portal at www.taxstampforum.com.

Everyone involved with tax stamps will benefit from Tax Stamp News. This includes government departments such as finance ministries, excise departments, customs and enforcement agencies that respectively specify and enforce tax stamp programmes. It also includes manufacturers and distributors of excisable products who have to implement these tax stamp programmes. TSN will similarly benefit
suppliers of systems and technologies for tax stamp production, application and logistics.

Each group has a different perspective, but all have an interest in tax stamps. So sharing information and ideas to establish a dialogue between these groups will improve mutual understanding and work to the common good in making tax stamp programmes more effective and efficient for all participants. It is the intention of Tax Stamp News to provide the vehicle for this dialogue. The sometimes conflicting interests of these groups are now converging and leading to common solutions. And key to such solutions are technologies and systems that enable security not only of the products themselves, but also the supply chain.With this in mind, Tax Stamp News will focus on the following topics of news and analysis:

• The illicit trade in tobacco, alcoholic drinks and other taxable products, which is fuelling the need for effective counter-measures by governments and manufacturers;
• Policy initiatives, regulations and legislation that is being enacted to control and secure the distribution of tobacco and alcohol. Although excise collection is a national remit (or in some cases, a provincial or state one) the illicit trade is international and so are some of the emerging policies;
• And what works in one tax jurisdiction may be of interest to another across the world, so we will also cover tax stamp programmes around the world - how they work, the technologies on which they are based, the benefi  ts they are bringing and how revenue and customs authorities can learn from one another and adopt best practice in their own programmes.
• The technologies, systems and solutions for authentication, serialisation and track and trace for tax stamps and for the protection of alcohol and tobacco more generally. This will include those already being deployed along with developments in the pipeline that could offer the solutions of the future.