The Draft Customs Duty Bill Since their release, the Draft Customs Duty Bill and the Draft Customs Control Bill have featured regularly in this column. If you have not yet printed a copy of the two draft Bills, you will need more than a ream of paper to do so. A ream of paper is 500 pages. The two daft Bills total 589 pages in all, 128 pages for the Draft Customs Duty and 461 pages for the Draft Customs Control Bill. To put it in context, if you want to have read through the Bills before comment is due, you will need to read 6.47 pages per day. In order to contextualise the issue, we will provide you with an overview. According to a press release, the scope of the draft Bill is confined to providing for the levying, payment and recovery of customs duties on goods imported or exported from South Africa. It is thus a “tax levying Act” which for its implementation relies on the proposed Customs Control Act. The draft Bill’s chapter headings, of which there are twelve (12), include: 1. Interpretation, Application and Administration of this Act; 2. Customs Tariff; 3. Payment of Duties, Penalties and Interest; 4. Refunds and Drawbacks; 5. Assessment of Duties; 6. Tariff Classification of Goods; 7. Valuation of Goods; 8. Origin (should really be “Origin of Goods”); 9. Preferential Tariff Treatment; 10. Advance Rulings; 11. Judicial Matters; and 12. Miscellaneous Matters. Chapter 3 accounts for 20.18%, Chapter 7 for 17.98%, Chapter 8 for 14.04%, and Chapter 6 for 60.53% of all the Sections of the draft Bill. In other words, these four chapters account for 60.53% of all the Sections. If you have not accounted for the Chapter descriptions, Chapter 7 relates to “Valuation of Goods”; Chapter 8 “Origin of Goods”, and Chapter 6 “Tariff Classification of Goods”, which accounts for 40.35% of all the Sections. The draft Bill also has 36 parts to the Chapters of which “Valuation of Goods” account for 27.59%, “Origin of Goods” for 20.69% and “Tariff Classification of Goods” for 10.34% of all the parts. In other words these three account for 58.62% of all the parts. In summary, the three core customs issues with which the draft Customs Duty Bills deal are tariff classification, customs valuation, and origin 91 Days Left to Comment on Draft Customs Bills
