One of the greatest things about Bermuda is its tax code. There's no income tax. Payroll tax is laughably low. And arguably more important still, residents are spared the agony of filing an annual tax return - a benefit probably not appreciated by most Bermudians, but one to which I can heartily attest.

Alas, it's not the whole story, as I discovered when I moved to the Island almost two years ago. Bermuda's tax system may be more attractive than that of other countries in most respects, but it has a warty, withered old hag shut away in the attic too.

Her name is the Bermuda Customs Tariff.

This document is a masterpiece of bureaucratic awfulness, its sprawling, rainforest-devouring 345 pages, 21 sections and 99 chapters detailing 5,000 different categories of item and the rate of duty that applies to each.

Most Bermudians will be lucky enough to never come across it. Bring something in the post and the duty is calculated for you. Declare your purchases at the Airport after a trip abroad and you're only required to total their value in each of ten categories. Sure, it involves digging through your luggage for your receipts, adding up a bunch of numbers and then standing in line for half an hour to pay, but at least The Tariff is nowhere to be seen.

Imagine, however, that you've just moved to the Island and are bringing in a container stacked with all your worldly possessions. Hark! Is that the creaking of the trapdoor to the attic that I hear? No longer are you grouping your new purchases into ten categories, you're grouping everything you own into five thousand.

There are several reasons why this is even worse than it sounds. First, the vast number of categories leads to considerable ambiguity. You might think that a wooden table should be categorised using one of the codes in chapter 44 - articles of wood - but in fact it should be categorised in chapter 94 - furniture. Second, the level of detail is excruciating. Is your table of a kind used in an office, a kitchen or a bedroom? All three types have different codes. Frustratingly, however, all three codes bear the same rate of duty.

Tedious? It's the kind of activity that saps your will to live.

Fortunately I have only had to deal with this once and will likely never have to do so again. Bermuda's retailers aren't so lucky. For small businesses in particular, who import containers filled with many different items, the pain of completing the paperwork can be extreme and only adds to their already high costs of doing business. (As if that wasn't bad enough, retailers pay the same rates of duty as you and I. And you wonder why you can often buy online from the US for less than you would pay in a store in Bermuda?)

It's not just determining the code to use for a particular product that's so time-consuming. The form on which a Customs declaration must be made is also pointlessly verbose, particularly if you're filling it out by hand. For each product category you must specify a Customs procedure code which is almost always 4000. Then you have to enter the total value of the goods in that category, first in its original currency, then in Bermuda dollars, then again on the line where you calculate the duty owed and once more where you calculate the wharfage. Yes, you're obliged to calculate wharfage separately for each product category, even though the rate is the same for all items in a shipment and could just be calculated once at the end of the declaration. There is a shorter version of the form, but that can only be used for non-commercial shipments and commercial shipments below $2,000.

Shortly after the tariff was introduced, small businesses lobbied the Government to simplify it, arguing that as most of the categories bear the same rate of duty they could be collapsed into a smaller number of groupings. However, Bermuda's code is based on the Harmonised Commodity Description and Coding System established in 1988 by the World Customs Organisation. It's an international standard for classifying goods used by Customs organisations worldwide. Although the Harmonised System provides for countries to add additional codes, it does not allow them to have less.

So what advantages does Bermuda get from complying with the Harmonised System? Well, essentially it just lets the Government collect trade statistics that are internationally comparable. I'm sure the data enables statisticians to plot all sorts of fun graphs in Excel when stuck in the office on a rainy afternoon, but is it worth the administrative burden it places on both Government and businesses? Not to mention unsuspecting new immigrants?

I seriously doubt it.

Phillip Wells' web log is www.limeyinbermuda.com. He writes every Thursday in The Royal Gazette.