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Concept
Customs
Summary
Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting tariffs and for controlling the flow of goods, including animals, transports, personal effects, and hazardous items, into and out of a country. Traditionally, customs has been considered as the fiscal subject that charges customs duties (i.e. tariffs) and other taxes on import and export. In recent decades, the views on the functions of customs have considerably expanded and now covers three basic issues: taxation, security, and trade facilitation.
Each country has its own laws and regulations for the import and export of goods into and out of a country, enforced by their respective customs authorities; the import/export of some goods may be restricted or forbidden entirely. A wide range of penalties are faced by those who break these laws.
The traditional function of customs has been the assessment and collection of customs duties, which is a tariff or tax on the importation or, at times, exportation of goods. Commercial goods not yet cleared through customs are held in a customs area, often called a bonded store, until processed. Authorized ports are usually recognized customs areas.
A more recent objective of customs has been trade facilitation, which is the streamlining of processing of import and export of goods to reduce trade transaction costs. The contemporary understanding of the “trade facilitation” concept is based on the Recommendation No. 4 of UN/CEFACT “National Trade Facilitation Bodies”. According to its provisions (para. 14),
facilitation covers formalities, procedures, documents and operations related to international trade transactions. Its goals are simplification, harmonization and standardization, so that transactions become easier, faster and more economical than before.
The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States has become the cardinal factor in prompting a significant strengthening of the security component of modern customs operations, after which security-oriented control measures for supply chains have been widely implemented for the aims of preventing risk identification.
Official source
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