The Trieste Customs Authority contested the inapplicability of the reduced rate of the antidumping duty to some clients of the Firm (importer and freight forwarder acting as indirect representative), since even though the declaration on the invoice which accompanied the importation had all the data required by Annex II of Regulation EU 412/2013, it bore neither a date (there was only the date of the invoice) nor the volume of the imported goods.
Customs served the notice of assessment and the decision to impose penalties, even though after the post-clearance inspection the importer had filed a declaration on the invoice substituting the incomplete one.
According to the Customs Authority the declaration bearing all the elements required by the Regulation should have been on the invoice which had been submitted at the moment of importation.
After the service of the appeals, as self-remedy the Customs Authority annulled the notices of assessment and the penalties accepting the Firm’s argumentations according to which customs law does not impede to file a substitute commercial invoice retrospectively.
Besides, a non-obstructive application of the Regulation focusing on its purposes could have only led to the annulment of the notices of assessment, because in the case at hand the goods were actually exported by one of the companies that was entitled to the tax concession and in any case were correctly identified.
(Trieste Office, Federica Fantuzzi, 0039 (0)40 7600281)
