A Short Guide to Customs Risk

Book excerpt: Customs have moved from frontier checks to audit based controls and transferred a high level of responsibility and risk to the trader. It is now the duty of the trader to identify and report any error or irregularity and to keep an impeccable audit trail from initial quotation to receipt of payment. For the business, failing to provide satisfactory compliance records will result in delayed shipments and serious disruption in the supply chain. This will in turn impact on financial performance indicators. Errors uncovered during these audits will yield heavy financial penalties and a Customs debt. --