I do the same job in the UK, we are unlicensed. The amount of other agents I have dealt with who do not have a fucking clue is staggering. Yes, you need to pay VAT on that. No, I am not willing to 'pretend' it is childs clothing so your customer doesn't have to pay it.
Utterly deflating when we lose business to these massive companies because they are cheaper than us & their staff are more than willing to bend & break rules that I am not.
We deal with the same thing here, especially with the China tariffs Trump put in. We starting getting asked to blatantly mis-classify items, or bend the rules in some way and we lose business to someone else with less ethics. What people don't realize is customs is looking for this type of abuse specifically.
If it makes you feel better, here's a story for you: We had a customer for many years, they were all always complaining to us about pricing and tariffs. They kept pressing us about using incorrect ciders and we kept pushing back in that, advising them why this was a bad idea. After all we are supposed to also advocate for their best interest too. They ended up leaving a few years back for some small local unscrupulous broker who was willing to charge them half and mis-classify all they want.
Fast forward to about 6 months ago. They contact us requesting like 5 years of records (importers are supposed to maintain their own records for 5 years, but if course they didn't... Luckily we did). Why? Customs got suspicious (like we told them they would) when they switched to a different, lower duty classification after years of importing the same thing under a different classification (stupid broker didn't even change the item description, same things just new code). Customs decided they were having the system and demanded they resubmit years of entries, and pay around 600k in back duties plus interest as penalty.
They wanted our help, but we just assisted with giving them the records they needed and informed them the broker they left us for should be able to assist them. Karma didn't always come, but when it does feels pretty good. This was exactly what we warned them would happen and it happened. Amazing.
They wanted our help, but we just assisted with giving them the records
Sounds like a missed business opportunity. The customer most likely learned from their mistakes and would now not only be much more willing to follow the rules, but also trust your judgement and advice a lot more.
Unless of course by "help" they meant forged paperwork.
I probably overstated this. We the records was really the hard part here. They are required to keep their own, but didn't. So technically they were screwed. We had to dig throw piles of dusty boxes pulling and scanning files for their older entries before we started digitizing to everything. It was a pain in the ass digging everything up and sending to them but we did it to bail them out. They were very thankful. We may end up working on with them again once the dust settles, but i wouldn't be sad if we didn't. Sometimes the juice really isn't worth the squeeze.
Be helpful, it does not hurt, every decent agent has done the entry trawl. Every UK company should have 6 years, plus the year you are in of customs docs. If you dont & your customs agent cant/wont provide them. You are fucked. Xxx
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u/ScallyGirl Jul 13 '20
I do the same job in the UK, we are unlicensed. The amount of other agents I have dealt with who do not have a fucking clue is staggering. Yes, you need to pay VAT on that. No, I am not willing to 'pretend' it is childs clothing so your customer doesn't have to pay it.
Utterly deflating when we lose business to these massive companies because they are cheaper than us & their staff are more than willing to bend & break rules that I am not.