It is likely that any interested parties will soon be able to access information held by customs authorities on the release of goods, including via the Internet. Such amendments to Federal Law No. 311-FZ have been prepared by the Federal Customs Service. The fact is that the current legislation imposes the obligation to pay customs duties equally on the person illegally transferring goods and on persons involved in such transfer, and in the case of imported goods also on persons who purchased such goods. In addition, the companies for which the goods are imported must then put them on the balance sheet, report on them, and therefore must clearly understand under which declaration (DT) the goods were imported. In addition, the DT contains information about the declarant and the importer. Thus, seeing the declaration, one can trace the movement of goods: if the chain is disconnected somewhere, then a natural question arises: how was the goods imported?

It is not a secret that a lot of goods are imported into our country “peas”, but it is also not a secret that now importers, customs intermediaries have at their disposal databases of issued declarations by customs authorities, from which a “suitable” DT is taken, the number of which is reported to the client – the real recipient of the goods. However, knowing only the DT number and not being able to obtain detailed information on it, it is simply impossible to establish the legality of importation. We unofficially asked foreign trade participants how they feel about the Federal Customs Service’s innovation, and this is what they told us. “This is good for those who buy goods honestly and want to know whether their goods have been imported ‘even’. They can insure themselves by making an enquiry to the customs authority. But this is unlikely to change crooked schemes, because brokers who work under such schemes almost never use a client “blindly”. They always agree in advance: we will bring your goods in so-and-so, we will find a declaration that will allow you to put them on the balance sheet and sell them, but you must understand that the declaration is wrong. And the client understands this,” said our interlocutor. However, according to the developer, the adoption of the bill will still reduce the share of shadow turnover of foreign goods on the territory of the Russian Federation. But there is also the other side of the coin: according to the law, the obligation to pay customs duties in case of illegal movement of goods arises for third parties not only if they knew about the illegal movement, but also if they should have known about it. This wording raises concerns, as it may be perceived by controlling authorities not only as a right, but also as an obligation: if the owner of the goods had the opportunity to obtain information about the legality of importation, then he should have known about the fact of illegal importation. These concerns do not seem unfounded if we draw an analogy with the declarant’s right to inspect the goods before submitting the Customs declaration. In practice, when the customs authority brings importers to responsibility within the framework of administrative cases, in response to the importer’s attempts to prove that he did not know and could not have known about the non-compliance of, for example, the goods with the invoice, the customs refers to the fact that the importer did not use the right granted to him, and therefore is guilty. And in most cases, the courts uphold this position of customs. This is also why many participants of foreign economic activity have the feeling that the Customs Service is slowly shifting all responsibility to business. Nevertheless, the draft federal law № 768260-6 “On Amendments to Article 100 of the Federal Law “On Customs Regulation in the Russian Federation” has recently received a favourable decision on the results of the ORV procedure and is submitted for consideration to the State Duma.
Source: http://провэд.рф