Letter - 'Customs penalties are prejudicing smaller agents'

"Agents hit out at crippling Customs penalties" (September 20, 2002) refers. I look after a small in-house clearing department allied to a fairly small storage company. I have also noticed an increase in penalties for simple clerical errors. As your reporter states, these would have been rejected in the past. One of our clearances was recently stopped for declaring a wrong rebate item. The entry should not have been accepted as the rebate registrant was not registered to receive goods under that particular item number, but was instead numbered and stamped and we were given a R2 500 penalty. All efforts to have the matter amicably resolved have proved fruitless. This might seem like a small amount but knocks a substantial amount off our bottom line. I have no problem with Customs getting hard on smugglers and crooks but why prejudice us smaller agents who perform the free service of collecting revenue for the state and are still being penalised for the privilege thereof. What do the smaller agents who have no voice via SAAFF etc do about addressing this problem? It would be interesting to hear from others in a similar position. Small agent