Thread by @vivamjm

UK Customs is “looking down the barrel of a potential nightmare” as a delay on the requirement to submit declarations nears its end and the country still lacks sufficient resources to cover the backlog.
HMRC announced it would provide a six-month (175-day) delay on declarations

for goods imported 1 January-1 July but with the first batch of delayed declarations due on 25 June, concerns have been raised over the country’s capacity to process them"
What to say?? Are we allowed "told you so"? @AnnaJerzewska @CaptainSwing666 @Petie42885201 @Lady_stormrider

We’re in a situation where we have maybe millions of declarations due and we have insufficient brokers to get us out of the backlog,” a customs expert told The Loadstar.
“We have all these importers that have not declared what they’ve imported, and shipments will fall through

the system, either because the importer cannot find a broker or they cannot be bothered.

Smugglers charter !!!

“It leaves HMRC in a quandary; one option is it may further extend the delay or maybe it will find itself missing out on a hell of a lot of income.”

Post-Brexit, brokers clearing goods from the EU are required to have one of several certifications, with the Customs Freight Simplified Procedures (CFSP) the most sought-after as it provides swifter clearance.
However, attaining CFSP-approval has proved anything but simple.....

with one company claiming it took close to five months, despite a “perfect application”.
“CFSP is the only mechanism for meeting the declaration requirements of goods imported under the six-month waiver and, as it takes four to five months to achieve,

those importers that have not applied will need to find a broker,” a source told The Loadstar.
Good luck !!!
“In a lot of cases, these are (irony) going to be EU companies and so the CFSP broker will need to work for them on an indirect basis.”

For brokers, processing UK importers’ declarations presents few problems, but by taking on EU importers as indirect clients, the broker becomes equally liable for any tax due on the imports declared.

This, said the customs expert, may make it “not so easy” to find brokers willing to handle the backlog of EU importers’ declarations.
“Let’s say we process a declaration and earn £35 for that bit of work, but it also makes us jointly liable for the tax due and.....

to give an idea of what we’re talking, the other day we processed a declaration that had some £2,300 in duty owed,” said the source. “If customs come and audit us and ask us to prove origin and we cannot, they will ask us to pay it, if not they will go to the importer....but

with the importer in the EU they could just say ‘come and get us’. Well, HMRC won't do that & they don’t have to, because they have us, here in the UK, equally liable & much easier to get a hold of.”
*Compounding the issue is that the UK’s failure to properly prepare for Brexit*

forced it to further extend the option of delaying declarations until 1 January 2022
This, said the source, would (not could) simply see the problem grow.
..& don't forget these are just the customs issues (from leaving the CU) not the regulatory/SPS issues (from leaving the SM)

Full report on UK's (5 years warned of by some of us) lack of, nowhere near enough, operational processing capacity for life outside the CU...
(& SM of course)
theloadstar.com/threat-to-uk-c…