Japan Customs has amended their import procedures in order to continuously realize both the effective border enforcement and the appropriate collection of taxes as well as securing the smooth import.
The amendments were made in response to the circumstances where (1) imports of cargo transacted through online shopping platforms and other means have been increasing due to the expansion of cross-border E-commerce (“EC”), (2) a large number of smuggling of illegal drugs and goods infringing intellectual property rights has been detected, and (3) tax evasion cases by declaring unreasonably low import value regarding the cargos utilizing FS are becoming apparent. (“Cargos utilizing FS” means those cargos that are being imported with the intention to be sold in Japan by making use of the EC fulfillment service, which is one of the services provided by the entities including EC service providers and which undertakes certain EC operations such as order receipt, inventory control, packing, shipment, delivery and bill collection.)
As of 1 October 2023, the following amendments become effective.
- Address and name of importers” becomes legally mandatory import declaration item under the Order for Enforcement of the Customs Act. In this connection, Japan Customs clarified who will be treated as importers. If an importer is a non-resident of Japan, the importer needs to appoint a Customs Procedure Agent and notify the same to Japan Customs.
- Items including “relationship between notifier and Customs Procedure Agent” are added in the notification form for Customs Procedure Agent. Also, it becomes mandatory to attach a copy of the delegation contract with Customs Procedure Agent to the notification form.
- The Director-General of Customs will be empowered to designate a person who has certain relationships with a non-resident importer as the Customs Procedure Agent of the non-resident importer if the non-resident importer does not respond to the request by the Director-General of Customs to appoint and notify Japan Customs of its Customs Procedure Agent.
Further amendment will become effective on 12 October 2025 to add following items to the import declaration items: whether a cargo is transacted through EC platforms (B2C cargo) or not; name of the EC platform and other elements if a cargo is transacted through EC platforms; and place of delivery after the import permission.
