The online narrative quickly painted the episode as yet another instance of Indian red tape.

But the issue was not Indian at all—the World Customs Organisation (WCO) has flagged lithium-ion batteries as a frequent category of misdeclared goods because they pose hazardous-good risks. Many jurisdictions have created special rules for the declaration of products containing lithium-ion batteries.

A social media frenzy over perceptions of an oppressive tax system is not new. Last year, a Tamil Nadu bakery came under the spotlight over its cream buns being taxed at a higher rate under GST than plain buns with cream sold separately.

What seemed like bureaucratic absurdity was, in fact, a matter of classification: is a bun, once filled with cream, now a confectionery? Such disputes are not unique to India.

Similar issues have occurred elsewhere, as seen in the famous Marks & Spencer teacake case in the UK, where courts agonized for decades over whether a chocolate-coated teacake was a cake (zero-rated) or a biscuit (standard-rated). A similar story is unfolding now with Marks & Spencer's strawberry sandwich in the UK. Examples abound worldwide.

The EU has wrestled with whether protein shakes are beverages, dietary supplements or medical preparations. Similar confusion arises over taxing synthetic diamonds—are they precious stones or industrial goods?

These episodes arise from a basic practice used by tax administrations worldwide—the Harmonized System (HS) of codes, a six-digit classification maintained by the World Customs Organisation (WCO) in Brussels.

It is the world's trade dictionary, with more than 5,000 headings covering everything from wheat and watches to lithium batteries and drones. Each product entering the marketplace must fit into that codebook. Its placement determines not only the tariff/tax rate but also trade statistics, eligibility for free-trade preferences and, at times, the very legality of its import.

When disputes arise, as they did in Chennai, they rarely reflect official obstinacy; instead, they expose how this global codebook struggles to keep up with innovation and usage.

Officials and jurists in both Chennai and Cheltenham use the WCO's General Rules for Interpretation to determine a product's 'essential character,' which affects its tax and tariff status. Unfortunately, in India, rather than explaining these regulatory complexities, authorities resort to ham-fisted recrimination and retaliation that do nothing to calm tempers or improve understanding.

The HS system, conceived in the 1980s, was built for a simpler material world to deal with staples such as cotton, steel, paper and plastics. It struggles to keep pace with rapid innovations and complex products enabled by modern technologies.

For example, when smartwatches first appeared, customs authorities worldwide debated whether they were watches (HS 9102), computers (8471) or communication devices (8517). After years of deliberation, the WCO finally ruled that their "principal function" was communication, not timekeeping.

Such instances are becoming more common; for example, a 'refrigerator' might be equipped with wi-fi and sensors, and a personal computer can function as a node for cloud services. The notion that one can define goods by a single material or function no longer fits a digitally fused economy.

The Chennai massager dispute resonated widely because it captured a universal tension: entrepreneurs see classification battles as bureaucratic obstacles, while customs officials view them as legal requirements.

Both perspectives are valid. The core issue stems from the structure of the HS system, a consensus-based classification maintained by more than 180 member states and revised only once every five years. Each revision introduces new subheadings for emerging technologies—drones, e-waste, lithium cells—but seldom removes outdated ones. This results in a sprawling, inconsistent grid with various interpretive grey areas.

Beyond interpretive questions arising from product innovation, the global trade system is creaking under the weight of additional requirements, such as tariffs linked to complex rules of origin and value addition (as seen in the Trump tariff debates) and the EU's intrusive documentation of production processes to calculate carbon content for its 'border adjustment' mechanism, CBAM.

These require a coding system that goes beyond the simple character of goods to capture global value chains and evolving production technologies.

The lesson from Chennai is not that India's customs officials necessarily erred, but that the global classification infrastructure is creaky. Social media may turn these episodes into morality plays about red-tapism, but the deeper story is more complex. While India's tax and bureaucratic frameworks are in urgent need of reform and modernization, a larger challenge faces trade and tax authorities globally.

Resolving that requires closer cooperation among legislators, administrators, statisticians and scientists on a truly global scale. There is a need to think deeply about classification regimes, but the pressure of social-media memes must not be allowed to dictate that conversation.

These are the author's personal views

The author is a visiting professor at the Institute for Studies of Industrial Development and former chief statistician of India