The United Kingdom’s customs changes have raised the concerns of hundreds of thousands of traders as the country moves to a new customs declaration system on October 1.
UK imports will run through the new Customs Declaration Service (CDS), as HMRC terminates support for the Customs Handling Imports and Exports Freight Platform (Chief) from October. The UK government wrote to more than 200 000 traders in June, calling for them to migrate to the new system before the looming deadline.
The decision to introduce CDS predates Brexit and was intended to meet the requirements of European trade regulations. However, some traders and logistics sector stakeholders who are resistant to the change had raised concerns that the UK was unnecessarily proceeding with the migration despite Brexit.
Deloitte tax partner and CustomsClear team member Daniel Barlow says the migration to CDS of the UK’s £7.5-billion customs clearance market has in itself birthed a major new market.
“According to the government, departing the EU has resulted in 200 million more declarations a year, some £7.5bn in new customs costs, and with the migration to CDS, this appeared an attractive market, where importers and exporters need assistance,” Barlow told The Load Star.
“Obviously, we are not looking at CustomsClear as a system that will cater to all those 200m declarations, but we do see it as a simplified way for processing some.”
Deloitte senior manager and consultant for border trade and migration, Matt Jeavons, cautioned that to view CDS as a “mistake” missed its benefits.
“HMRC has developed a system that creates more accessibility for traders to make their own customs declarations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has left a lot of people concerned about how they will make declarations, but that has resulted in the creation of solutions like CustomsClear which can be used as the interface to do so.”
He said CDS aimed to simplify the process and remove problems within the old system and the regulatory landscape.
“Its ease of use should make it transformative,” he said.
CustomsClear is a software-as-a-service system that billed by monthly subscription, that can automate the declarations process, swiftly demystifying the migration to the new UK system.
