Draft Decree on sanctioning administrative violations on Customs

	Sanctions for administrative violations in the State Treasury field
	There will be five Decrees and eight Circulars for guiding Tax Management Law 2019
	Obstacles and shortcomings when Customs implement anti-smuggling- Part 2: Inadequacies in handling firecrackers and material evidence

Customs officials of Song Than Industrial Zone (Binh Duong Customs) inspect imported raw materials. Photo: T.H

According to the Drafting Agency, the draft will unify sanctions for individuals and organizations committing many violations, but these acts are in a cause-effect relationship. Particularly, sanctions for violations of policy on management of imported and exported goods which are consumed while waiting for completion of customs clearance (violation of customs supervision – Article 12 of the Decree on sanctioning Customs administrative violations).

According to the current regulations described in the Decree on sanctioning administrative violations on customs, the act of violations of policy on management of imported and exported goods is stipulated in Article 14 of the Decree, while the act of consumption of imported goods while waiting for completion of customs clearance but the goods violates the commodity policy is stipulated in Article 12 of this Decree.

Through the implementation of regulations of the Decree on sanctioning administrative violations on Customs, the Drafting Agency identified that some units impose sanctions against one act (according to Article 12) but others impose sanctions against two acts (according to Article 14). This is inconsistent and does not ensure the principle of only one sanction for one violation.

Therefore, the Drafting Agency proposes that the draft Decree on sanctioning administrative violations on customs should stipulate that violations of the policy on management of imported and exported goods that are consumed while waiting for completion of customs clearance shall be sanctioned for the act of violating the regulation on customs supervision (Clauses 5, 6, 7 and 8 of Article 12 of the draft Decree).

Also in Article 12 of the current Decree on sanctioning administrative violations on customs, a number of acts are being independently stipulated, such as acts of arbitrarily breaking customs seals and consuming goods under customs supervision, should be revised to link these violations and only impose one sanction for violations based on the principle of amending and supplementing acts in the draft Decree on sanctioning administrative violations on customs.

Specifically, the act of failing to ensure the original status of customs seals and the act of consuming goods under customs supervision are linked to the act of failing to ensure the status of customs seals for goods which have been consumed while being subject to customs supervision.

The Drafting Agency proposes to amend and supplement the act of "arbitrarily breaking customs seals" into "failing to ensure the original status of customs seals; failing to ensure the shipping seals for cases where customs seals are not required as prescribed in the transportation of goods subject to customs supervision; using fake customs seals or seals of forged shipping companies.”

The Drafting Agency said that, based on the provisions of Clause 4, Clause 6, Article 50 of Circular 38/2015 / TT-BTC which have been amended and supplemented in Circular 39/2018 / TT-BTC, the declarant must not only preserve the original status of the customs seal, but also the original status of shipping seals for cases where Customs seals are not required. Therefore, the amendments and supplements are to fully cover acts of violations related to the sealing of goods under customs supervision.

Also according to the Drafting Agency, the Decree on sanctioning administrative violations on customs amends and supplements a group of acts. Specifically, Point b, Clause 1, Article 12 of the draft will add acts of destruction of discarded materials and defective products for goods processed and manufactured for export and export processing enterprises without notifying the customs office.

Long An Customs collects arrears and sanction more than 9.3 billion VND from specialised inspections VCN – According to Long An Customs Department, in the first six months of 2019, the unit ...

Point g, Clause 2, Article 12 of the draft shall be supplemented with the direction of keeping goods which are allowed to be stored at a place that does not meet the conditions prescribed by law without legitimate reasons. In addition, the draft Decree supplements regulations to sanction cases of "goods without specialized inspection results" (as described in Point b, Clause 5, Article 12 of the draft) like the case that the goods does not meet import quality standard to prevent organizations and individuals registering for specialized inspection, then are allowed to take goods to storage while pending inspection results but those goods are not taken to inspection and are consumed while they are under customs supervision.