Unintended consequences -UK customs and Brexit

Today’s news brings more info on unintended consequences of Brexit. I submit this could be fairly serious in thelong run, and make customs essentially unenforceable from EU to the UK.

Apparently it takes customs a long time to process the forms required to import from the EU. MNow EU shippers could use a broker to file the forms. The charge for that is small. But if the broker in the UK files the forms, they are also making themselves liable for nonpayment of the customs duty. Often this duty is quite large. And the UK customs (HMRC) cannot go after the EU cargo owner– the law isn’t in effect there. So who do they go after? The local UK brokerage.

Brokers in the UK simply cannot afford this risk, so they will quit brokering cargo from the UK. And the HMRC will have nowhere to go to collect duties.

I’m not sure what can be done to unwind this, either. Brexit will untimately break the agreements on duties that were in place, in favor of self-determination. So the UK will have to ‘self-determine’ how to collect duties. Do we go back to customs patrols and ship searches? You can bet there will be plenty of cheating by failure to file forms, on the part of EU cargo owners, perhaps even smuggling. The nightmares of the 19th century are before us.

Serious threat to UK customs duty revenue as backlog of declarations grows – The Loadstar

By Alex Whiteman, Brexit reporter 07/06/2021

Serious threat to UK customs duty revenue as backlog of declarations grows – The Loadstar