On September 13, the French Customs issued its first customs valuation adjustment authorization for several Member States. A desire to strengthen the Customs Union on a “sensitive” subject.

Indeed, the Binding Value Information does not exist at the European level (contrary to the origin/RCO and tariff classification/RTC parameters). Thus, a French RCV is only opposable to the French customs and does not secure the operator if a customs challenge is triggered by another Member State, knowing that the customs approaches may be different.

A consultation on the project of a value rescript (the RCV) applicable for all customs in the European Union had been launched in 2018 by the European Commission. The implementation would be planned for 2025 with a possible earlier phasing-in.

Reminder: What is an adjustment authorization?

When it comes to import customs value, it may happen that the amount of certain costs that are part of the price to be subjected to duties and taxes, such as the cost of transporting the goods or the cost of royalties, are not known. In this case, in order to clear the goods through customs, the importer can file a Value Adjustment (VA) request with customs.

The VA allows the declaration of a customs value by applying an adjustment rate directly applied to the invoice price per item on the customs declaration. This rate is recalculated every year based on the data that the company sends to Customs so that the rate is as accurate as possible.