Cross-area Customs Declaration to Start in Free Trade Zones

　　Vice Chairman Thomas M.F. Yeh of the Council for Economic Planning and Development called a coordination meeting with representatives of the Finance Ministry's Department of Customs Administration and customs brokers on April 26 with the aim of promoting greater convenience in customs clearance. The meeting reached a decision to implement cross-customs-area online customs brokerage operations first in free trade zones, and passed a resolution that customs brokers need not preserve customs-declaration documents. These two agreements will facilitate the development of the distribution services industry.

　　Under the current system, customs brokers are required to register with their local customs bureau and then handle customs clearance for their local customers. To carry out customs brokerage in different areas, local customs brokers in those areas represent each other. Under the cross-area online customs declaration plan, customs clearance will be accomplished via the "declaration in one place for customs clearance nation-wide" method; this has aroused opposition from numerous small customs brokers, who will be adversely affected.

　　Vice Chairman Yeh notes that advanced countries such as the United States and Australia already practice cross-customs-area customs declaration. To be in line with the international trade practices, and to lessen the impact of this new measure on customs brokers, it will be implemented first in free trade zones and the current system will be retained in other customs areas.

　　The customs brokers' association notes that the requirement for customs brokers to retain customs-declaration documents for five years, which imposes a heavy burden of storage on customs brokers, has been reinterpreted so that in the future, the retention of the documents will be the responsibility of the owner of the relevant goods. Customs brokers will no longer have to keep the documents.

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