Công văn 3923/TCHQ-GSQL

To: Customs Departments of provinces and cities

Through recent monitoring and management of low value exports and imports (MEC, MIC) sent by express delivery services, some goods owners are found to be taking advantage of policies on duty-free import of goods sent by post and express delivery services to evade tax. To prevent this, General Department of Customs hereby requests that Customs Departments of provinces and cities instruct their Sub-departments of Customs responsible for locations where goods sent by post and express delivery services are gathered to perform the following tasks:

1. Regarding customs valuation of imports sent by express delivery services specified in Clause 2 Article 29 of the Government’s Decree No. 134/2016/ND-CP dated 01/09/2016, which is amended by Clause 11 Article 1 of the Government’s Decree No. 18/2021/ND-CP dated 11/03/2021:

In case a shipment under 1 master bill (or an equivalent document) contains multiple packages under separate house bills (or equivalent documents) of the same owner (the same name/ID number or equivalent document) and the total customs value of these packages exceeds 1.000.000 VND, the entire shipment shall be subject to import duty and not eligible for duty exemption specified in Clause 11 Article 1 of Decree No. 18/2021/ND-CP mentioned above.

2. Intensification of inspection, supervision and control of low value goods sent by express delivery services in order to prevent goods owners from taking advantage of regulations to commit trade fraud:

a) Customs authorities shall not carry out customs procedures for any low value import declaration that contains inadequate or unclear information about the consignee: (i) the consignee address is missing, inadequate or false, (ii) ID number or equivalent document number is missing.

b) Assign officials to frequently review low value import declarations to detect consignees that have the same address, phone number, ID number (or equivalent document number) or unclear address and send information to relevant units such as:

- Market surveillance authorities, tax authorities, local National Steering Committee for Prevention of Smuggling, Trade Fraud and Counterfeits (Committee 389)

- Specialized units of Customs Departments: Supervision and Management Division, Risk Management Division, drug enforcement teams;

- Specialized units of General Department of Customs: Supervision and Management Department, Risk Management Department, Smuggling Investigation and Prevention Department.

c) While examining the organizations and individuals that frequently import goods by express delivery services (receiving goods more than once per day), if the goods are gifts, goods purchased via e-commerce platforms or common goods, request the customs declarants to provide relevant documents:

- Purchase orders for goods purchased via e-commerce platforms.

- Documents proving that the goods are gifts.

- Commercial invoices for common goods.

Do not carry out customs procedures if the customs declarant fails to provide documents proving these transactions.

d) Enhance inspection of custom valuation if it is suspected that goods are divided into smaller packages to achieve the duty-free values.

dd) Enhance inspection of policies on goods management according to regulations of the Law on Foreign Trade Management and its elaborating documents, Point a Clause 2, Point a Clause 3 Article 22 of the Government’s Decree No. 85/2019/ND-CP dated 14/11/2019 to ensure the classification of goods into Group 2 is conformable with Clause 5 Article 2 of Circular No. 56/2019/TT-BTC dated 23/08/2019 of the Ministry of Finance.

e) Regarding the list of frequent consignees (enclosed with Official Dispatch No. 19/QLRR-P6 dated  27/01/2021 and Official Dispatch No. 82/QLRR-P6 dated 20/04/2021 of Risk Management Department), follow instructions in (c) to prevent these consignees from moving to another administrative division to follow customs procedures.

3. Customs Departments shall report warehouses leased by express delivery enterprises that fail to fulfill conditions for customs inspection and supervision to General Department of Customs for revocation of warehouse registration numbers.

4. Express delivery enterprises shall:

a) Perform the following tasks when preparing customs declarations on behalf of goods owner or instructing consignors to prepare customs declarations:

- Determine customs values of imports sent by express delivery services to classify goods in accordance with the instructions in (1) of this document.

- Declare adequate information about the consignee on the low value import declaration in accordance with instructions in 2(a) of this document.

b) Provide information for their overseas agents, overseas e-commerce platforms about tax policies, lists of goods banned from import, suspended from import and refuse to ship these goods. In case of suspicion in the exporting country during scanning of goods upon receipt, send notifications and share the scanned images to the customs authority where import procedures are carried out for inspection upon arrival of these goods.

c) Cooperate with customs authorities in focused inspection, supervision, control of division of shipments to evade tax, commit trade fraud, or transport illegal goods.

Issues that arise during the implementation of this document should be reported to the General Department of Customs (Supervision and Management Department) for instructions./.