CUSTOMS DUTY PLANNING
 Making the most of the opportunities

1. Why Customs Planning?

For many years, a large number of companies engaged in international trade regarded payment of customs duties and the cost of compliance with customs law and regulations as unavoidable expenses with little or no scope for planning. Now, ever-increasing competition in the international marketplace means that savings have to be made.

Customs planning can save a company money even if it does not regard itself as an importer or an exporter. If a business uses imported components or if it manufactures for export then there may well be savings to be made by judicious use of the relief's and facilities available, take for example DUTY DRAWBACK (in USA) & IPR - Inward Processing Relief (in UK). In some cases a purchaser may not even be aware that the goods he/she was using had been imported, and that such a saving was therefore possible.

No company can afford to ignore the possible benefit of customs planning.

2. What is customs planning?


It involves arranging a company's affairs to ensure that it suffers the minimum possible exposure to Customs taxation consistent with its legal obligations. Customs offer a variety of simplified procedures to ease both their own administrative burden and traders' costs of compliance. Planning the use of such procedures can considerably reduce the administration budget and speed goods through ports and airports.

The converse applies if the regulations are not met. At best delays will be experienced in the delivery of goods. At worst they may be seized and penalties imposed on the importing company.

Both of these factors have resulted in an increased awareness of customs planning and shown the need for specialist advice.

Plan now to:

  1. ·Minimise exposure to customs duties;
  2. ·Maximise use of facilities and relief's;
  3. ·Minimise costs of compliance;
  4. ·Improve profitability and cash-flow;
  5. ·Avoid the risk of seizure and penalties.
  6. Conclusion
  7. There are many types of relief's, any of which may well provide substantial savings in a company's costs as well as the opportunity to manage cash flow to greater advantage. However, maximum advantages are usually to be gained from combining a number of relief's and facilities into a package carefully designed to suit an individual company's needs.

Customs Freight Simplified Procedures

CFSP has been developed as a successor to the “Customs Freight 2000” project to meet demands from importers for enhancements in the methods by which consignments are dealt with in a simplified way at the frontier. Operating alongside standard procedures, the revised arrangements provide for simplified release of goods at the frontier, and a common system of reporting supplementary information, at a later date, by electronic data interchange (EDI). CFSP will also support the customs strategic aim on an integrated approach to overseeing large company indirect tax affairs.

The revised arrangements are optional for importers. There is no compulsion for companies to amend their current importing procedures as “Normal” import clearance procedures will be unaffected by this system.

The main elements of Customs Freight Simplified Procedures are:-