Deze pagina is ook beschikbaar in het Nederlands. Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie.
The customs debt is the amount of customs duty payable. The amount payable is composed of the import duty on a product and possibly anti-dumping and/or countervailing duties. National taxes, such as value added tax (VAT), excise duty, consumption tax and coal tax are not included in the term of customs debt, but these taxes are levied as if they were an import duty.
Thousands of import declarations are submitted daily by several different forwarders and shipping agents. During the verification of those declarations Customs could conclude that a correction of the data is required. As a consequence of these corrections, the customs debt could increase leading to paying more customs duties than originally declared. However, we note that in practice such corrections could be only the tip of the iceberg. Whereas Customs starts a check by usage of retrospective systematic checking of declarations, i.e. the post-clearance audit, the next step is a full audit. In both cases applies that if Customs is of the opinion that too little customs duties were levied at an earlier point in time, it may proceed to a UTB for the difference between the original amount of customs debt levied and the corrected amount of customs debt.