Customs Compliance

Did you know?

In 2005 HMRC recovered £155,000,000 ($310,000,000) in additional monies after goods had been cleared and delivered to final customer. In the same year HMRC refunded £72,000,000 ($144,000,000) in monies which had been overpaid. These are significant amounts on the relatively small but increasing audits conducted on UK businesses by HMRC.

HMRC has undergone many changes in the last ten years. Border checks and controls on arriving goods have largely disappeared. UK customs has moved to a more audit based approach after goods have been cleared and often delivered to final end user.

The legal responsibility resides with the client to ensure that they remain compliant with all HMRC rules and regulations; a point which we often find is not fully understood by businesses. They often see this as part of the logistics process and rely on their service provider to perform this important and somewhat complicated task.

In our experience this is an area that many logistics companies have varying degrees of expertise and all too often inadequate resources or knowledge to perform this important function correctly. We have found many businesses that are unknowingly in potential conflict with HMRC for this reason.

Frequently we find a consequence of this non compliance has actually cost the client extra costs in the form of unnecessary extra duties and taxes.

Unitas Worldwide approaches this issue by discussing your business processes to create a compliance profile that evolves and is updated as rules and regulations change and as new products are introduced. This profile resides in our system ready to electronically connect with arriving shipments matching SKU's with the correct codes and values.

The financial implications for getting it wrong are obvious!

We at Unitas Worldwide can help you get it right now and into the future. We believe your fiscal supply chain should be as efficient as your carton supply chain.

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