Essential Guide to Customs Procedure

1 Introduction
■ Discussion on the place of HM Revenue & Customs in international trade, both in global terms and within the UK government structure

2 Collecting statistics
■ Importance of trade statistics and the methods of collecting the information
■ 27 Member States of the EU – why is it different? VAT control and the sales lists
■ Intra-Community Trade Statistics
■ Community transit – identifying the transit status, eg T1, T2 customs entry documentation
■ The New Computerised Transit System (NCTS)

3 Customs entry documents and responsibilities
■ The Single Administration Document (SADS) – key information required
■ SAD harmonisation – what it was and the changes it brought
■ The UK electronic declaration system at import, export and EU transit
■ Customs Freight Simplified Procedures (CFSP) – advantages
■ HMRC’s Management Support Service (MSS)
■ Evidence of export for VAT purposes
■ Customs warehousing
– Advantages/disadvantages
– Procedures and documentation

4 Duty revenue collection
■ The Harmonised System of Tariff Coding (Commodity Codes)
– Reading and understanding the tariff
– Commodity coding
– Tax collection – different types of duty
– Special provisions – how do they affect us?
– Binding tariff information rulings

5 Minimising duty payment (1)
■ Duty Relief Regimes and Customs Procedure Codes
■ Inward Processing Relief (IPR)
■ Outward Processing Relief (OPR)
■ Other Duty relief procedures:
– End-use approvals
– Returned goods relief
– Rejected imports
■ ATA carnet

6 Valuation issues
■ Valuations declarations and duty valuation build-up
– Costs that can legitimately be removed from the declared value
– Costs that must be included for Customs Duty purposes
– Valuation audits – be prepared

7 Minimising duty payment (2)
■ European Union Preferential Trade Agreements
– Understanding preference and the tariff – what is the duty rate of your goods in the EU or
overseas?
– Rules of origin and how to apply them
– Preference documents and special “exporter” approvals – EUR1/EUR-MED/ ATR/ GSP
– Suppliers’ declarations
– Internal control and cost of non-compliance

8 Prohibitions and restrictions
■ Export licensing
– Regulations and compliance issues
– Types of licences
■ Import licensing
– Goods subject to import controls

9 Update in legislation
■ New Customs Code
■ Authorised Economic Operato Status
■ Keeping up-to-date – where to go for further information