Cannot declare List property in the JPA @Entity class. It says 'Basic' attribute type should not be a container

I know, that's an old question, but as it is still relevant, I will try to help with my solution.

You are most likely missing a relational (like @OneToMany) annotation and/or @Entity annotation.

I had a same problem in:

@Entity
public class SomeFee {
    @Id
    private Long id;
    private String code;
    private String name;
    private List<AdditionalFee> additionalFees;
    //getters, setters..
}

class AdditionalFee {
    @Id
    private int id;
    //getters, setters..
}

additionalFees was the field causing the problem.

What I was missing and what helped me are the following:

1. @Entity annotation on the Generic Type argument (AdditionalFee) class;
2. @OneToMany (or any other type of appropriate relation fitting your case) annotation on the private List<AdditionalFee> additionalFees; field.

So, the working version looked like this:

@Entity
public class SomeFee {
    @Id
    private Long id;
    private String code;
    private String name;
    @OneToMany
    private List<AdditionalFee> additionalFees;
    //getters, setters..
}

@Entity
class AdditionalFee {
    @Id
    private int id;
    //getters, setters..
}

You can also use @ElementCollection:

@ElementCollection
private List<String> tags;

Change @basic to @OneToMany for List types