Archives from author » Peter de Groot

Want to Save Money on Goods Entering/Exiting European Union? See if Your Company Fits the Profile to Use a Customs Warehouse.

Posted by Peter de Groot in Customs & Regulatory Compliance on Mar 16, 2011

Let’s start with “What is a Customs Warehouse?” A Customs Warehouse, also referred to as a Bonded Warehouse, is not a new concept; it actually dates back to the early 1700s. It was proposed as a way to reduce revenue fraud and to help importers stay competitive when importing heavily taxed items. The proposal wasn’t adopted until the late 1800s. The original provisions referred to the locations as “King’s Warehouses”. These warehouses were provided by the “Crown” or had to be approved by the customs authorities. Importers were required to give bonds to pay for duties when articles were removed instead of at time of importation.

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First Descartes Customer Live with EMCS Solution

Posted by Peter de Groot in Customs & Regulatory Compliance on Dec 02, 2010

Peter de Groot is Product Strategy Manager at Descartes

Descartes has gone live with its first customer using Descartes’ EMCS solution. The customer, one of the world's major oil and gas groups, selected Descartes' Excise Movement & Control System (EMCS) solution to manage electronic declarations for excise shipments.

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Be Ready to Facilitate Your Excise Movements

Posted by Peter de Groot in Customs & Regulatory Compliance on Jul 07, 2010

Peter de Groot is Product Strategy Manager at Descartes

The e-excise era

The European Excise Movement and Control System (EMCS) will be switched on in 2010 and mandatory for relevant movements of goods by January 2011. The overall objective of this new system is to prevent fraud and evasion, as a result of cross-border cooperation between varying European Customs organizations, particularly through the exchange of electronic information on ‘excisable’ products movements. It also aims to simplify procedures for operators (e.g. alcohol producers or distributors) by standardizing and harmonizing the entailed business activities and information flows between these operators and the Excise Authorities. For all operators this project creates an opportunity to optimize their internal excise processes, save costs and speed up the time-to-ship.

An important step in the MASP program

In order to create a more efficient customs environment and to enable pro-active risk management, the European Government has set up a Multi Annual Strategic Plan (MASP) program to implement electronic customs in the European Union (EU). In the next four to five years, we will gradually see the conversion of all paper-based customs procedures into streamlined, automated electronic processes.

One step of that process is called Excise Movement and Control Systems (EMCS), and applies to excise goods in particular.

What is EMCS?

EMCS is a computerised system for monitoring movements of excise goods between European Member States under duty suspension.

The European commission decided to build EMCS, a trader-to-trader link, to follow the movement of excise goods between Member States for which no excise duties have yet been paid. The objective is to replace the paper document that currently has to accompany these movements, known as the Administrative Accompanying Document or AAD, with electronic messages from the consignor to the consignee via the administrations of the Member States.

Type of goods controlled by EMCS

Excise duties are indirect taxes on the consumption or the use of certain products. In contrast to the value-added-tax (VAT), they are mainly specific taxes, i.e. expressed as a monetary amount per quantity of the product. Today, all EU countries apply excise duties on three product categories: on alcoholic beverages, manufactured tobacco products and energy products (motor fuels and heating fuels). The goods mentioned in these categories are subject to excise duties in the entire EU, and are therefore called community excise goods. Next to the community excise goods, there are also national excise goods, determined by a specific Member State. For instance, Belgian citizens also pay these kinds of taxes on coffee and soft drinks, while in the surrounding countries this is not the case.

The rules for charging duty are set out in a number of EU Directives, which means that some member states have a higher excise duty rate than others. The revenue from excise duties accrues entirely to the Member States.