In a thematic review, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation summarized the practice of considering disputes related to determining the customs value of goods during customs declaration. The review identifies three key legal positions.
The first position concerns related persons. If the seller and the buyer are recognized as interrelated and the customs authority finds signs that this relationship has affected the price of the transaction, it is the declarant who must prove the opposite — confirm that the price was set without the influence of the relationship of the parties, including disclosing information about pricing. The burden of proof lies with the declarant, not with the customs.
The second position is about exports. Payments by a foreign buyer for the transportation of goods across Russia are included in the customs value of the exported goods if they are in fact part of its price, even if they are not formally included in the contract price. The Supreme Court explicitly pointed out the risk of manipulation: artificially dividing a single transaction into several civil law contracts in order to remove part of the value from customs valuation does not work - such expenses are still considered as an indirect payment for the goods.
The third position is about the import. The costs of transporting imported goods across the territory of the Union from the place of arrival are not included in the customs value if they are separated from the price, declared by the declarant and documented. At the same time, the law does not establish a closed list of documents for such confirmation — the evidence may vary depending on the type of contract (transportation, forwarding, agency, commission) and the number of entities involved. The main requirement for the documents is one thing: they must eliminate the risk of arbitrary determination of the customs value and give the customs authority the opportunity to verify the accuracy of the data.
For the declarants, these three positions are not an abstract theory, but a direct guide to action. For transactions between related parties, it is worthwhile to prepare a package of pricing documents in advance, rather than waiting for a customs request. When exporting, it is important to avoid artificially splitting a single transaction into several contracts for the sake of formally underestimating the customs value, since this scheme is directly disassembled and does not work. When importing, it is important not to rely on the only correct type of document to confirm transportation costs, but to assume that any reliable and verifiable proof corresponding to a specific contractual transportation scheme is suitable.
