Seafood enterprises comment on many contents of Customs declaration

On 10th May 2017, the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers continued to collect recommendations from enterprises for the draft Circular revising Circular 38/2015 / TT-BTC with many comments and proposal of enterprises on contents of Customs declaration.

Workers of Binh Dinh Seafood Joint Stock Company pack seafood for export. Photo: T.H.

Seafood enterprises said that according to the draft Circular, a Bill of Lading must be declared on a Customs declaration. In the case where a single Bill of Lading is declared for more than one Customs declaration, the Customs declarant must notify the separation of the Bills of Lading to Customs officers before registering the Customs declaration through the e-Customs data processing system.

The system automatically receives, inspects and responds to the separation of Bills of Lading to the Customs declarant immediately after receiving the notice of separation of Bills of Lading. The Customs declarant shall use the branch of returned Bills of Lading to perform the Customs declaration".

Seafood enterprises shall make suggestions and recommendations for the declaration of "information on many Customs declarations to be used for a Bill of Lading" on the Customs declaration form when declaring Customs officers (without prior registration). Because during the implementation of the enterprises, there are many cases that a single Bill of Lading includes many shipments (export or import). The requirement to separate Bills of Lading in draft regulations will make it difficult for businesses, costly but sometimes impossible because the separation of Bills of Lading is related to international business conditions, affecting the payment procedures by L / C.

In addition, the separation of the Bills of Lading must be approved by the foreign seller, then the shipping company is allowed to separate. Therefore, the registration of the separation of Bills of lading in advance with Customs officers before conducting Customs declaration will incur additional tasks, wasting time and unnecessary human resources for both enterprises and Customs.

For the additional declaration, enterprises proposed that: Time limit for making additional declaration (regardless of before and after Customs clearance) for the following cases, including: Non-tax related amendment and adjustment: Allowing enterprises to adjust without time limit (eg quantity, value and misspelling); amendments and adjustments related to taxes: allow enterprises to adjust within 60 days (for imports for export production). At the same time, within the time limit, there is no limitation on the number of turns to amend and supplement the declaration, which is not updated criteria for risk management for enterprises.

The reason businesses suggest the above content is to avoid the actual situation of imported goods with misspellings and the difference in the calculation but they do not detect immediately until enterprises re-check for liquidity records (after 60 days), then to find out the errors to adjust, then they shall be fined. There have been may cases where raw materials are purchased, there are errors in sizing over a relatively long period of time (due to the large volume of cargoes per vessel: from a thousand tonnes to three or four thousand tonnes. ).

As reflected by enterprises, currently, Customs officers are implementing Article 5, Article 6 of Decree No. 45/2016 / ND-CP of 26th May 2016 amending and supplementing some articles of the Government Decree No. 127/2013 / ND-CP of 15th October 2013 stipulating the handling of administrative violations and the enforcement of administrative decisions in the Customs.

Accordingly, there are no longer regulations on administrative penalties for non-tariff adjustment before and after 60 days. This is also an open forum for businesses, creating favourable conditions for businesses. Therefore, the draft amendment of Circular 38 should not be revised to become more stringent to continue to support and facilitate enterprises in production and business.

In addition, seafood enterprises proposed that the General Department of Vietnam Customs should add regulations on not controlling the number of additional times of enterprises. Because, in fact, enterprises implement additional adjustments to reduce the amount or misspellings approved by the Customs force. However, enterprises will be updated to the risk management criteria in the system, affecting the classification of enterprises as well as the flow of declarations, even if enterprises conduct the additional declarations many times, they will be considered to be fine with administrative penalties.

Therefore, although Circular 38/2015 / TT-BTC and the General Department of Vietnam Customs still allow enterprises to declare any additional criteria within 60 days and this additional declaration does not affect the enforcement of the Customs Law of enterprises, the local Customs authorities do not agree with the enterprise to do this and consider increasing the risk management criteria in the system for enterprises which have many additional declarations.