Imad Kassir

The government imposes restrictions on imports and exports for the following reasons:

1. Protect the morals of the public.
2. Protect the lives of the humans, animals and plants.
3. IPR protection.
4. To maintain the artistic, historic and archaeological value of national treasure.
5. To conserve the exhaustible natural resources.
6. To discourage and limit the trafficking of war related items, weapons and illegal drugs.
7. Prevent the use of prison labor.

Implemented in 1993, the Customs Modernization Act established the requirement that all importers must exercise reasonable care when importing goods into the U.S. No matter the size of your business, it is your responsibility to be compliant with all trade regulations. Not declaring items with Customs can result in negative consequences such as fines, penalties, and detention of your product. If your business imports anything, then you are solely responsible for ensuring that you comply with the regulations.

As a general definition, data used by national and EU authorities for producing statistics are considered confidential if statistical units can be identified, either directly or indirectly, and information about individuals or businesses is disclosed as a result.

Under the principle of passive confidentiality, Member States have to take appropriate measures only if requested to do so by companies which feel that their interests would be harmed by publication of the data. This principle is recommended by the United Nations in its IMTS 2010 publication and set out in the EU legislation for detailed statistics on intra- and extra-EU trade. It has the great advantage of limiting the loss of information for users and thus making the data more useful.

Under the principle of active confidentiality, confidential data are automatically hidden by the national statistical authority if certain criteria are met, without the company needing to send a request. In ITGS, this principle applies only to the data by enterprise characteristics (i.e. by size, sector of economic activity or level of concentration).

Rules applied for granting confidentiality — The choice of the criteria to be met by the company is left to the Member States. The most common criteria are the following:

• the number of companies on the market is limited, e.g. fewer than three companies contribute to a single data cell; or
• the company is in a dominant position on the market (by representing, for instance, at least 75 % of the total trade) or is at least an important stakeholder contributing to a single data cell.

In ITGS, the trade value corresponds to the statistical value, i.e. to the amount which would be paid in the event of sale or purchase at the time and place the goods cross the national border of the reporting Member State. It is said to be a FOB type value (free on board) for exports/dispatches and a CIF type value (cost, insurance, freight) for imports/arrivals.

In the case of exports/dispatches, the statistical value includes only incidental expenses (freight, insurance) incurred on the part of the journey located on the territory of the exporting Member State. For imports/arrivals, it includes only incidental expenses incurred on the part of the journey located outside the territory of the importing Member State. It does not include taxes on import or export, such as customs and excise duties or VAT.

In the case of goods imported or exported for processing, it is always the total value of the goods which should be reported, before and after processing, not just the value added by the processing procedure.

In the assessable value, the following criteria are included:

• Commission and brokerage;
• Cost of container, which are treated as being one with the goods for customs purposes;
• Cost of packing – labour or materials;
• Materials, components, tools, etc. supplied by buyer;
• Royalties and license fees;
• Value of proceeds of subsequent sales;
• Other payment as condition of sale of goods being valued;
• Cost of transport up to place of importation;
• Landing charges; and,
• Cost of insurance.