By Nick Lung.     Photo : Victoire Joncheray

In the past few weeks, we have talked about what is import customs declaration, the role of import tariffs, and what documents the customs broker must provide when accepting the commission. This time, I like to bring up about the "barrier" that is the last thing you don't want to encounter in import declaration.

＊What is a merchandise held??

The "customs clearance" of goods generally refers to the failure of smooth customs clearance for various reasons when the goods pass through the customs.

Common reasons for getting stuck include:

Customs have doubts about the tariff of the goods (how much tariffs are to be imposed)

Customs doubts whether the goods comply with regulations

The actual situation of the goods, such as packaging, product name, origin, description, etc., and the goods documents (commercial invoice, packing list) do not conform to

The system is randomly selected, and those who are selected will be subject to more careful inspection and verification.

According to laws and regulations, commodities need to be subject to additional requirements such as inspection, quarantine, inspection, application for licenses, etc.

Those who handle the customs are new recruits, who have just passed the national examination and training, and are enthusiastic about customs inspection and duties

Human factor error, abnormal operation process, etc.

＊What impact will the held have on importers and exporters?

Generally speaking, you will encounter several results after the held:

Detention: the goods are stranded in the customs, and the warehouse rent will be added on a daily basis

Customs clearance: Goods are cleared and released smoothly

Return: The goods cannot be cleared through customs and are required to be returned to the origin. It may be necessary to apply for an additional import and export, pay additional freight, and go through the import and export declaration at the origin.

Destruction: If the goods cannot be cleared through customs, you need to apply for destruction and scheduling. The warehouse rental fee will be added on a daily basis, and then a fee will be paid, and the relevant units will destroy the goods.

Transfer: The customs needs to transfer the relevant units to determine whether there is further violation of the law, and will send it to the relevant departments, such as the District Prosecutor's Office, the Health Bureau and other units for follow-up determination

Name counting (blacklist): Customs brokers or import and export manufacturers may be added with bad import and export records

Here is my own experience. When I worked in a customs broker, I handled the interesting incidents of a customer entering customs declaration. This customer usually has good import and export records. There was no abnormality. As a result, a customer wanted to export a corrugated paper machine to Vietnam, and the system took it to C3 for customs inspection. When the container was opened, the custom found that there were two more bottles of "Jin Lan Soy Sauce" in it, which were not declared in the customs declaration documents. After the customer explained to the customs because this machine was to be exported to Vietnamese relatives for sale, they said that people miss Taiwan in a foreign land, so they secretly stuffed two bottles of soy sauce in it. The customs did not agree with this practice and asked the exporter to take back the soy sauce and fined 5,000. The important thing is that the import and export within half a year will be changed to C3 customs clearance, and after half a year, it will be changed to C2 customs clearance

You may think that C3 is to open the box to check the goods and review the documents, but the hidden cost behind this cannot be underestimated. Assuming that the whole container is drawn to C3, the customer needs to pay the unpacking fee to the container yard for inspection (the fee is vary in amount. and different charges are required depending on the product packaging method), the cost of lifting the container, the cost of transporting the container to the centralized inspection area, the packaging cost of returning the goods to the original state after unpacking, and in case the inspection fails to catch up with the customs clearance and release time and miss the sailing further has problems with payment of purchase and sale contracts with foreign customers, so you must not take risks when importing and exporting.

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