When Customs officer Geoffrey Chaucer was penning the Canterbury Tales, customs duties were already a major feature of international trade.

In spite of the single market and the GATT, they and their modern cousins in indirect taxation are not about to go away.

Indeed, if volumes of trade increase, the points at which the shoe pinches will become more noticeable.In 1992/93, over £26bn was collected in excise duties, customs duties and EU agricultural levies.

In addition to the raw cost to traders which these figures represent, there must be counted the impact of quotas, origin rules, valuation disputes, processing regimes and reliefs etc.

Yet from all this interface with trade, the law reports did not show a single case coming before our own courts last year.A look at the European Court reports for the same period, however, discloses almost weekly references from other member states on these taxes.

Since the number of cases potentially giving rise to a reference to Luxembourg is much greater than the number in fact referred, it is apparent that there is a considerable volume of litigation on duties and levies in the other EU states.

We know that the same is true of business before the international trade court in the USA.Unless Customs and Excise here is quite unique among tax administrations, the likelihood must be that British duty payers are sometimes paying too much.

Nor would that be surprising in view of the difficulty of mounting an appeal.

For customs duties and agricultural levies the only method of appeal has been the archaic action in the High Court for a declaration under s.127 of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979.

For excise duties, only judicial review has in general been available - though for all duties there is also the Kafkaesque remedy of raising technical liability points as a defence in criminal proceedings.The Finance Bill now before Parliament proposes a radical change: it sets up a new combined VAT and duties tribunal to hear appeals concerning all matters to do with VAT, customs duty liability, excise duties (which include the new air passenger duty) and agricultural levies.

This has happened because the EU customs code requires that there should be appeal procedures available in member states from 1 January 1994.

All the other states now have such an appeal jurisdiction, and we alone have had to be given until 1 January 1995 to catch up.

It is sad that taxpayers who pay these indirect taxes have had to wait so long to obtain ordinary appeal rights.But there are two p ieces of bad news.

The first is that there will be an obligatory pre-appeal review by Customs and Excise.

This pre-appeal stage may last up to 45 days, at the end of which Customs is not obliged to have done anything.

If it has not acted, there is a deemed confirmation of their original decision.

The mandatory pre-appeal review seems to be at odds with the parent provision in art 243 of the customs code, which refers to the trader's right of appeal being exercisable before both the Customs authorities and an independent body, and appears to make the administrative appeal optional.Import transactions move fast and this roadblock on the way to the tribunal will be seen as cutting down the taxpayer's rights, and may be commercially punitive.

In view of this, it can only be a matter of time before an appeal comes forward raising the EU law point and requesting a reference of the issue to the European Court.

It is strange that the Bill should contain a provision which almost courts controversy.

Is this the Treasury wanting to avoid the cost of tribunal appeals?The corollary of this restriction is that a trader who fails to get a decision reversed at the internal Customs review, but wins before the tribunal, cannot be awarded the costs of making his or her submissions to the department.

If, under the VAT tribunal regime, the trader appeals first, then makes submissions to the department and persuades them to concede, he or she can ask the tribunal to award costs from the date the appeal was lodged.There is an EU law point here too.

The code refers to appeals to the administration and to an independent body in the same breath, and provides no basis for treating the two situations differently.

Is it correct for UK law to do so? Under the Bill, is the trader given the rights of appeal envisaged by the EU code if one of the appeals is merely a request for a review (on which no decision need be made) and costs cannot be awarded?The second tranche of bad news is more serious still.

It is that there will be no appeal against the exercise by Customs of its ancient right to seize goods which they claim should pay more duty, or to have been involved in a procedural irregularity.

The use of this remedy in rem will result in liability appeals to the tribunal being forestalled by goods being seized.Seizures can only be challenged in the High Court or the magistrates' court, so that technical liability issues suitable for a tax tribunal will continue to be subsumed in debates about customs procedure and heard before the magistrates between the drunk and disorderly cases and the road traffic offences.

If Customs chooses the High Court for seizure cases (the venue is at its option), we are back to square one, with costly and lengthy proceedings being necessary.

An alternative route to the tribunal for liability issues is essential.Other problems arise on the appeal provisions in the Bill and it will be interesting to see whether MPs will be more receptive to lobbying on the Finance Bill than they usually are.

But the overall balance is positive.

There is a volume of complex disputes which business has hitherto been unable or reluctant to bring forward, and the opening of access to effective justice must be welcomed.

Amidst the changes to civil appeal rights, it is worth noting, however, that Customs' criminal investigation powers remain untouched, and are even extended.Who will handle this complex work? In line with the general and special commissioners and the existing VAT tribunal, the new tribunal will have open rights of audience and its procedure will be similar.

The recession has sharpened attitudes to cost effectiveness as much in the private sector as at the Treasury.

And, since companies have been reluctant hitherto to engage in High Court litigation, they will probably be reluctant to retain a charabanc of lawyers for their appeals.Direct professional access to barristers by accountants and others has been removing the traditional intermediary role of solicitors in first instance tax litigation, and the VAT tribunal is already familiar with specialist advocates from many backgrounds.

It is up to solicitors to ensure that their skills in analysing legal issues and marshalling evidence are put to the fore in this competitive environment.

In view of the kind of law which bears on the newly appealable topics, there is plenty of scope for legal practitioners to conduct the appeals.Excise duties remain largely national in character, with little EU legislation applicable.

The major change here is in the enforcement regime, where the Finance Bill provides a wholesale shift to civil penalties much like those we have had for VAT, and to a self-assessment regime for duty.

There are reasonable excuse defences, with mitigation only for 'civil fraud', and exclusions for reliance on another and shortage of funds to pay the duty.

Much of the learning on VAT penalties should be readily adaptable.Is the Treasury at work here too? In 1992/93, civil penalties in VAT totalled £155m, whereas criminal penalties amounted only to £6m.

Excise traders will discover early on that this apparently benign change is likely to prove more expensive for them than the old criminal regime, which was cumbersome for Customs to operate.The picture changes for customs duties and agricultural levies.

Well over 90% of the legislation is now in directly applicable EU regulations.

Because there has been so little customs litigation in this country, nearly all the relevant case law is in judgments of the European Court, many of which are not to be found in the (selective) Common Market Law Reports.

Unlike the main UK tax legislation, EU legislation flows through an ever open sluice.

The Official Journal and the European Court Reports are therefore a necessity.The EU customs code and its implementing regulation cover most of the basic customs law and render much of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 redundant, except in so far as it relates to non-EU matters such as the control of drugs.

These regulations make detailed provision for customs entries, the liability for and the remission and recovery of duty, rules of origin, valuation, warehousing of various kinds, inward and outward processing of goods, temporary import, EU transit, free zones and reliefs from duty.The tariff is also an EU regulation, renewed each year and supplemented weekly.

Alongside is the system of agricultural levies, mentioned in the tariff but imposed by separate legislation and quantified by reference to the green ecu, itself the subject of special regulations.

Changes to levies are made very frequently and there is a system of advance fixing certificates both for levies and for export refunds, their counterpart.

Tariff questions are further complicated by the frequent existence of quotas.Looking at this scene, one oddity of the new appeal provisions is that the trader who can challenge a CAP import levy assessment before the tribunal will, it seems, not be able to do so in the case of a CAP export refund, and will have to proceed as now in the High Court.

For those in the food industry there may be a close c ommercial link between the two situations, with perhaps (appealable) inward processing relief in issue as well.More controversial still in commercial terms are anti-dumping and countervailing duties.

These are imposed on a provisional basis by the Commission following a preliminary investigation and, if made definitive by the EU Council, they remain.

If not, the sums paid or deposited are repaid.

A number of challenges to anti-dumping duties has been made in the European Court, but seldom with success.Whether a particular anti-dumping duty applies to an import will, however, be an issue primarily for national courts and may turn on the true origin of the goods: the origin rules are complex, and they differ according to whether the importer is seeking a preferential rate of duty or is facing anti-dumping duty.The best part of a year remains before the VAT and duties tribunal hears its first case under the new provisions.

The time need not be wasted.

Those in trades affected can be reassessing their businesses in the light of the prospect of easier remedies to come.

It is reassuring to know that before we enter the 21st century customs disputes will have moved on from the context Chaucer knew and loved.