In our blog post “The Hamamatsu TP/customs valuation case comes to a surprising conclusion” we summarized the final judgment of the German Federal Fiscal Court (Bundesfinanzhof; “BFH”) in the “Hamamatsu” case. The BFH had ruled that taxpayers cannot claim refund of import duties in case of lump-sum TP adjustments applied at the end of the fiscal year that result in a subsequent lump-sum decrease in resale prices and thus in an intercompany credit note for…
On 17 May 2023, the European Commission (the “Commission”) published a set of proposals that, according to the Commission, constitute the “most ambitious and comprehensive reform of the EU Customs Union since its establishment in 1968.” Please find our previous blogpost in which we anticipated the proposal here. The proposals now published aim to: Increase duty revenue; Avoid illicit and non-compliant products; Align the current customs framework with the current e-commerce landscape; and Uniformize the…
Introduction of an EU Customs Agency is becoming more and more tangible. This idea of a “European Customs Agency” was first proposed on 31 March 2022 by the “Wise Persons Group on Challenges Facing the Customs Union”. More recently, on 28 February 2023, during the 62nd Plenary Meeting of the Trade Contact Group set up by the European Commission, the creation of an EU Customs Authority was once again discussed alongside the introduction of an…
On 10 May 2023 the Council of the European Union and European Parliament signed the regulation implementing the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (“CBAM”). CBAM will enter into force twenty days after it is published in the Official Journal of the European Union. Below we will provide further detail on the regulation and highlight some aspects that have been amended when compared to the initial proposal. The new CBAM Regulation is targeted at imports of products…
On 19 April 2023, the European Parliament adopted the final text of a new EU Regulation aimed at tackling deforestation and forest degradation (the “Deforestation Regulation”) requiring companies to undertake due diligence into the source of a wide range of commodities, including cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm-oil, rubber, soya and wood, to ensure that they have not been obtained as a result of deforestation. Once in force, obligated will have 18 months to implement the new…
Baker McKenzie’s Global Compliance Blog published “Belgium: New tax reporting obligations for payment service providers as of 2024,” which can be viewed here.
In November we reported that the European Commission announced plans to include binding valuation information (“BVI”) decisions in its customs legislation. The Commission has published the draft Delegated Regulation and obtained feedback from a public consultation, which ended on 18 January 2023. The Commission describes this move as the completion of an already well-established legal and operational framework for issuing decisions relating to binding tariff classification information (“BTI”) and binding origin information (“BOI”). The aim…
Baker McKenzie’s International Commercial & Trade Blog published “European Union: Six months on from the entry into force of Regulation (EU) 2019/1009 rules for placing fertilisers products on the EU market,” which can be viewed here.
The UK’s trade remedies body, the Trade Remedies Authority (“TRA”) announced on 22 February that it has begun a reconsideration of its recommendation in Case AD0012, concerning imports of certain aluminium extrusions originating in China (here). Notably, this was the TRA’s first anti-dumping investigation in response to an application from UK industry. A reconsideration application is a request for the TRA to review its findings in a concluded investigation. The applicant, a UK producer in Case AD0012, alleges that the TRA erred in its…
The United Kingdom has agreed with the European Union a new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland which seeks to significantly reduce the number of checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. The Windsor Framework would create two ‘lanes’ for goods which are arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain: A green lane for goods remaining in Northern Ireland (for which there will be minimal checks or paperwork); A red lane for goods…