Goods of a minimum value exempted from duties

Goods of a customs value below 500,000 VND or a total amount of import/ export duties below 50,000 VND for one time importation or exportation shall be free of import / export duties. Photo: T.Trang.

The Ministry of Finance has just guided the provincial and city customs departments to implement the above mentioned regulations of the Law on Import and Export Duties. However, the Ministry of Finance revealed this provision was not applied to the goods as gifts, commodities exchanged by border citizens and goods sent by express.

Dossiers and procedures for duty exemption are performed on the basis of the prevailing stipulations for duty-free cases that are not subjected to registering the list of duty-free goods as provided in the Circular No. 38//2015/TT-BTC dated March 25, 2015 by the Ministry of Finance.

This new regulation is one kind of trade facilitation. The previous Law on Import and Export Duties did not stipulate duty exemption for goods of a minimum value or subjected to a minimum amount of duties/ taxes. Although specific samples were stipulated as goods free of duty, the regulations were still unclear and interpreted in different ways. This might be abused for the purpose of commercial fraud.

In addition, advertisement products of low values and samples in orders or serving manufacture or films, photographs, models or any similar goods replacing the foresaid samples or advertisement products caused difficulties in reality.

Therefore, in order to facilitate production and trading activities in line with international commitments, the Law on Import and Export Duties amended the regulations of the above mentioned duty-free cases. Concretely, goods of a customs value below 500,000 VND or a total amount of import/ export duties below 50,000 VND for one time importation or exportation shall be free of import / export duties.

In parallel, samples, films, photographs, models or goods replacing imported samples for delivering orders or manufacture and advertisement products for non-commercial purposes shall be exempted from duties.