[magicalhippo]

Here in Norway we have the infamous "E6 ham". We have an import tax on dry-cured ham[1], but not unprocessed meat.

Someone figured out it was cheaper then to import unprocessed meat from Spain to Norway, turn the truck around as soon as they were customs cleared and drive the 3000 km or so back to Spain for curing.

Once cured they'd re-import the processed meat, which now has a different tariff due to being "Norwegian" ham processed abroad, while still being proper Spanish dry-cured ham.

So a ~6000 km (3700 miles) detour to save on import taxes, yay...

The name comes from the E6 route[2] the trucks drive through Sweden and into Norway.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham#Dry-cured

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_route_E6

[shagie]

> Someone figured out it was cheaper then to import unprocessed meat from Spain to Norway, turn the truck around as soon as they were customs cleared and drive the 3000 km or so back to Spain for curing.

Ahh, those Norwegians and their customs evasions. https://youtu.be/oP1Oq3JLNbc (do note that I'm ascribing this to Norwegians completely in jest - tone is difficult to get across in text)

... Which recently had an update. https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/asc-gets-green-li...

[captainmuon]

I never get why you actually have to put the ham on the truck.

In a slightly less illogical EU you could just go to the appropriate EU committe, and get an exception where you send the ham on a "virtual trip". Just proove that you payed the cost of shipment. The ham benefits, the environment benefits, everybody wins.

I would even go further and introduce a legal principle. Every law that can be circumvented by a ridiculous trick is either void, or the loophole has to be closed.

[function_seven]

> Every law that can be circumvented by a ridiculous trick is either void, or the loophole has to be closed.

California did something like this with window tint violations. It's illegal to have your windows tinted darker than some amount. In the old days, if you were ticketed for this, it would be a "Fix It" ticket. You get the tint removed, have a cop sign off that the violation was corrected, and pay some nominal fine. ($25, I think)

Almost everyone who got one of these tickets would have the tint peeled off, the ticket cleared, and be back at the tint shop the next day to get it put back on. If you like your tint, then true cost of the ticket was $225 or whatever.

Now the ticket gives you an option! You can still correct the violation, have it signed off, and pay the fee, or you can pay a larger fine and not have to demonstrate that you've cured the violation. They probably figured if the driver was going to go through the expense of removing and reapplying the tint, the state might as well see that money.

Wasn't really a loophole, per se, but it was a circumvention that the state decided to eliminate buy allowing you to buy an indulgence :)

[sokoloff]

Some tint shops responded to this loss of revenue by offering “tint guarantees” where you could have tint reapplied for some period of time for half price.

The game over here in New England is getting a statement of medical accommodation from an eye doctor asserting that bright sun is uncomfortable but you have no other limitations.

[throaway46546]

I have heard you can just bribe a cop to sign it off and you don't have to have it removed at all.

[withinboredom]

I had a drug dealer friend with a cop as a roommate. The cop “didn’t know” but he “loved to help out friends of friends.” It was entirely comical over at their house.

[wiseleo]

That sounds like a screenplay :)

[function_seven]

I've never heard of outright bribes, but plenty of people have a cop as a family member or friend who'd gladly fix the fix-it ticket for you. At the time I got mine, I didn't have that option. I paid the fine.

[jorams]

> In a slightly less illogical EU

This has approximately nothing to do with the EU. Norway is not in the EU and not in the EU Customs Union.

[taspeotis]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area

> The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the Agreement on the European Economic Area, an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade Association. The EEA links the EU member states and three EFTA states (Iceland, Liechtenstein, and *Norway*) into an internal market governed by the same basic rules.

[magicalhippo]

We have our own customs rules though. The proper EU members are all bound by the EU customs TARIC[1] while Norway has its own[2].

The EEA limits what we can do with our own customs tariff though.

[1]: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/calculation-c...

[2]: https://tolltariffen.toll.no/tolltariff?language=en

[quickthrower2]

A lesson for anyone implementing metrics and incentives

[setr]

Well, it still did its job of increasing cost of external cured ham… just by not as much of an increase, or as directly, as they intended

[ianlevesque]

Also an egregious waste of carbon emissions in the era of climate change though.

[adrianN]

We should just put a price on carbon directly instead of optimizing lots of other rules to also take emissions into account. Fuel is just too cheap.

[robertlagrant]

Or just get rid of silly nonsense like this rule so people are not incentivised to drive 6000km by the government.

[adrianN]

There are about a billion rules. Do you volunteer to assess each one's impact on the climate and balance it against other economic effects of the rule, or do you simply attach the proper price to carbon and let the market figure it out?

[peregren]

Too cheap for who?

There are carbon taxes being implemented and on the whole i think they are good. But combined with the current spike in energy prices, they are hammering some people.

[eru]

Give the poor money, if you care about them. That's more efficient than making the tax system more complicated.

[adrianN]

Too cheap for the climate, i.e. too cheap for anybody under 40. A tax-and-rebate system can help poor people without hampering the effect of a high carbon price.

[mavhc]

Everything should have a pollution tax of the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it creates, then use the money to clean it up

[biztos]

If you are a major oil exporter, is that a bug or a feature?

https://www.npd.no/en/

[kozak]

We now call this "proof of work".

[kgc]

Maybe they could just send an NFT of the meat to save on transport costs.

[consp]

This reminds me of puzzles (as in physical 1000 piece things) in the 90s. It was cheaper to manufacture them somewhere, import them, export them to Spain, import them again than sell them straight from the country of origin which I think was Finland. All the while the stuff never moved and it was all on paper afaik. The lettering had to be in Spanish though but it's a puzzle, you know how it works.

[rasz]

Biggest Polish IT company was bankrupted by this. Optimus SA was called Polish Dell&Yahoo combined in the nineties. They manufactured computers, made multimedia/education software and games, distributed software/games, IT contracts/system integration, POS systems deployments, ERP, consulting, biggest web portal, biggest online communicator, biggest search engine.

.. then one day in 1999 ministry of education announced a huge contracts for school computerization program, and specifically requested "no VAT" prices (22%) from all bidders. The only way to achieve this was exporting/re-importing Polish build computers, something Ministry itself not only suggested, but was publicly proud of securing.

Year later local prosecutor accused Optimus of evading $2m VAT, froze all assets (~$100mil company in 2000) and arranged SWAT to arrest CEO, leading to inability to pay wages/service debt. 3 years and multiple appeals later investigation was closed without so much as "sorry". This wasnt even the only company destroyed same way. Another one was JTT, mayor PC hardware distributor https://pl-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/JTT_Computer?...

In 2011 CD Project reverse merger with corpse of Optimus SA to get on the stock exchange. https://pl-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/CD_Projekt?_x...

11 years later (2014) CD Project managed to "win" ~$300K settlement for court mistake https://crn-pl.translate.goog/aktualnosci/cd-projekt-dostal-...

Same year mayor shareholder of defunct JTT received ~$10mil settlement, which was immediately overturned. It only took them another 7 years to finally get ~$1mil just last year https://www-pb-pl.translate.goog/mci-otrzyma-5-mln-zl-odszko... for the destruction of a company worth ~$20mil in 2000.

[mszcz]

Yeah, I remember that. I think I still have a framed, very old cover of Wprost with Roman Kluska (the owner of Optimus) after we won a pyrrhic victory against the state for that, years after the fact. Of course, none of the bureaucrats responsible for burning Optimus to the ground got even as much as a citation. In fact, I vaguely recall reading about them getting bonuses for slapping a big fine on Optimus.

The framed cover used to be a reminder that, in general, the state and the Polish equivalent of the IRS is not, and never will be, your friend. Sure, I've had some friendly and helpful chats with multiple people working for our IRS but I've never forgotten Optimus.

[eru]

They are called jigsaw puzzlez in English, I believe.

[Hello71]

source? upon searching for "e6 ham", "norway ham tax", "e6 skinke" etc found only this post.

[Cederfjard]

Quick search found this, from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation in 2014: https://www.nrk.no/norge/ellevill-skinkereise-1.11613122

Translated: https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/norge/ellevill-skinkereise...

[Hello71]

thanks!

[danielfoster]

Not everything is on the Internet.

[jonnycomputer]

Heathen!

[actually_a_dog]

I guess it's not that "infamous," then, is it?

[magicalhippo]

Perhaps the wrong choice of word, English is my second language after all. But it's quite well known in the food importing industry here AFAIK, and most seem to recognize it's exceptionally silly. But it's cheaper...

[robjan]

Infamous is probably the correct word, its infamy just hasn't been translated.

[geoduck14]

Welcome to English!

Infamous refers to something that is "well known for being bad!". A classic example would be a (well known) pirate! If the tax you are talking about is bad (I'm pretty sure it is) and well known (also, yes), then "Infamous" is a fine word to use

Notorious is a similar word - well known for something bad

Famous works if it isn't bad, but it usnusually used for people, and I would imagine "the highest threshold" of well-known stuff - so expect people to argue with you: "I haven't heard of X, so it must not be famous!"

Renowned and prominent are fine alternatives to "famous"

My personal favorite is Preeminent- which carries the notion of "#1 best". "My king is the Preeminent leader" - there is NO OTHER leader that can be king

Again, welcome to English, enjoy your stay!

[magicalhippo]

A friend of mine works at a company that does just this.

He said the drivers who haven't done it before gets quite confused when ordered back to Spain just as they've crossed the border, without unloading.

[biztos]

If hams are fungible from a customs point of view (why would they not be?) you could try pre-curing the hams and have them ready just across the border. Ham in, ham out, ham in again, no extra trip to Spain required.

Then you sell the uncured hams you needed for the stamps to a pet-food factory or for German “salami” or whatever.

[Someone]

They possibly need to be cured in Spain so that they can be called Spanish (e.g. Serrano or Ibérico).

And I guess they aren’t fungible because they get tested for health reasons and protein content.

In the EU, tracking is needed. If people get ill from eating ham, it’s important to exactly know where the meat came from (factory, farm, sometimes even the specific pig. Conversely, if animals get ill, it’s important to know where their milk went. https://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/traces_en)

[biztos]

They would be cured in Spain! Before coming up to the border.

However, you have reminded me that indeed this would probably not work because of all the tracking required to prevent the Mad Swine Pox and so on.

[kgwgk]

What do you mean?

a) You bring two sets of high quality hams from Spain, one cured and the other raw

b) You cross the border in and out with the raw hams, and tell the customs clerk "I'll come back the processed product"

c) You cross the border again with the cured hams "that was quick, eh?"

d) You dispose of the raw hams selling them at a high discount on a roadside stand

I guess you can do it even more efficiently changing slightly the first two steps:

a) You bring a thousand cured hams and a single raw ham

b) You cross the border in and out a thousand times with the (only) raw ham you have

That improves the economics of the scheme, but makes it look even more fishy.

[biztos]

a) Yes, but raw is not so high quality.

b) Yes

c) Yes but if the hams are fungible, which the other commenter explained they are not, then doing this at volume would make the timing irrelevant.

d) Yes, or just pre-sell them to someplace that doesn't care about quality. Just has to be inside the EU since these are the hams that (you say) have not yet been to Norway!

Crossing the border a thousand times, carrying a ham each way each time, would probably be less efficient, unless you get tax breaks for your hourly employees, in which case you could also have a thousand employees on standby and do it relay-style.

While it's true that this would never work, and if you tried it'd be extremely fishy, I do in fact know a place you can buy pork sausage that tastes of fish.

Sometimes the absurd is possible!

[epse]

That sure sounds like fraud and lying to customs officers, a bit like saying you import cheap Chinese tablets and instead you import WACOM cintiq drawing tablets worth thousands

[drcode]

Nutella was similarly invented as a chocolate substitute, to (you guessed it) avoid chocolate tariffs.

[desdiv]

Do you happen to have a source for that?

My understanding is that Napoleon's Continental System caused a shortage of cocoa in continental Europe, so chocolatiers had to substitute in hazelnuts. This became Gianduja[0], which later were modified to become Nutella.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianduja_(chocolate)

[eru]

Isn't that basically exactly the same story as what the comment you replied to said?

[kgwgk]

Except for the taxes part :-)

[drcode]

I had read it somewhere, but I agree it may not have been accurate, because I can't easily find a citation