Amending and supplementing guidance on classification and analysis of import – export goods

Analysing sample at Goods classification Center under Customs Department of Goods Classification. Photo: H.Nụ

On January 30, 2015, the Minister of Finance signed Circular No. 14/2015/TT-BTC guiding the classification of goods and analysis for classifying goods; analysis for quality inspection, food safety inspection for imported and exported goods (referred to as Circular 14). Circular 14 built on the basis of Decision 49/QD-CTN of the President dated March 6, 1998, the protocol providing for the implementation of the List of AHTNs, Decree 08/2015/ND-CP of the Government, Decree 59/2018/ND-CP amending and supplementing articles of Decree No. 08/2015/ND-CP.

According to the Import-Export Duty Department, after five years of implementation, Circular 14 is considered the legal basis for goods classification, analysis for goods classification and creating unity in the implementation of incorporate fully Harmonization Convention on description and coding of goods of the World Customs Organization (HS Convention) into national law. Besides that, the provisions of Circular 14 have overcome shortcomings in analysis and classification of goods, applying tax rates, restricting the application of a commodity with different analysis results leading to different classifications, contributing to facilitating businesses in self-declaration and self-tax calculation.

During more than five years of implementation, the General Department of Vietnam Customs has issued more than 20,000 notices of classification results and some 60,000 notices of analysis results together with HS codes of goods, completing the customs database system on analysis and classification of goods. Circular 14 has also contributed to improving the capacity and efficiency of goods analysis and classification over the past time, meeting management requirements in the context of Vietnam's deep participation in the regional and world free trade agreements. Moreover, Circular 14 also helps Customs ensure correct and full collection of the State budget.

In addition to the positive impacts, a number of limitations and shortcomings have arisen in the implementation of Circular 14. It showed it is necessary to study amendments and supplements to match with the practice.

Over the past time, many legal documents have changed, so it is no longer ensuring the legal compliance of the provisions and guidance in Circular 14 in accordance with current regulations.

Based on a summary assessment of the results and shortcomings in the implementation of Circular 14, the General Department of Vietnam Customs found some regulations are no longer consistent with the content of Circular 39/2018/TT-BTC of the Minister of Finance amending and supplementing articles of Circular 38/2015 / TT-BTC such as requiring customs declarants to fully declare the criteria under the List of Import and Export goods of Vietnam to verify commodity code or specify based on instructions for classifying and handling complaints in some special cases or supplementing the technical documents in the dossier of request for analysis to classify.

Besides that, handling analysis and classification results involves many levels, leading to a longer time to issue the notification of classification results. Or the authority of issuing notification of analysis results together with commodity codes that have not been legalised in legal documents also raises many problems in the implementation process.

Accordingly, to have a basis for guidance on goods classification in accordance with the provisions of the Customs Law, Decree 59/2018/ND-CP and other laws that aim to ensure consistency in the implementation process, at the same time, solving problems arising in practical implementation of Circular 14 both facilitates import and export activities and ensures State management of customs, the General Department of Vietnam Customs has implemented the draft circular amending and supplementing a number of articles of Circular 14.

According to the Import-Export Duty Department, the draft circular amending and supplementing a number of articles of Circular 14 will add new contents on the classification of goods to appropriate with management requirements. At the same time synthesise the contents on guidance of goods classification in a number of other effective and newly issued legal documents.

The draft circular amending and supplementing a number of articles of Circular 14 will add specific provisions on goods description in accordance with the list of HS to ensure strict implementation of the provisions of treaties, facilitating when handling problems related to the translation of descriptions of goods from English to Vietnamese.

The draft circular amending and supplementing a number of articles of Circular 14 will also supplement provisions related to dossiers requesting analysis for classification. Concretising this provision in the draft circular amending and supplementing a number of articles of Circular 14 to facilitate the analysis, classification and reduce time required to exchange documents to request additional technical documents, improve the accuracy of the goods analysis, additional proposals in the dossier submitted for analysis attaching with technical documents of the goods.

In addition, the draft circular amending and supplementing a number of articles of Circular 14 will also amend and supplement many provisions on samples of analysed goods for classification; notice classification results; analysis for quality inspection, food safety inspection; source of information to build a database on the List of import and export goods.