Government control over the customs value of products
On February 24, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted new amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine. These changes establish the normative setting of the customs value for a certain category of goods, which includes sunflower seeds. Thus, in order to register the export of sunflowers, it will be necessary to specify the customs value of the product no less than that established by the relevant ministry. And accordingly, the export duty will be calculated precisely from the specified value of the goods.
How will they determine the normative value?
According to the Law, such value will be the arithmetic mean value of price quotations on international commodity exchanges that took place during the previous calendar month, in US dollars.
That is, the date of the conclusion of the contract, the date of the export declaration and the period for which the price will be determined will be completely different. Such a price will be set once a month. All of the above will usually affect the amount of duty that the exporter must pay. But traders will have no possibility to calculate the specific amount of such costs in advance when concluding a contract.
Moreover, there are no quotations of sunflower seeds on major international exchanges. So it is interesting which indicators of exchanges will the Ministry take into account.
The main purpose of this innovation is, of course, to support the domestic manufacturer. But it should also play an important role in the control of unscrupulous exporters, who deliberately underestimated the customs value of goods in order to reduce taxation.