Customs duties due to COVID-19 extra shipping costs. A force majeure?

Abstract

Sea freight prices have risen sharply due to the COVID-19 crisis, global shortages of ships, declining competition in the field, and containers of contagious demand. In Israel, the value for customs purposes includes the transportation costs, as in Singapore and the majority of the states. On the contrary, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, have chosen to exclude transportation costs for customs value purposes. Therefore, the increase in transportation costs leads to the increase in the value of goods for customs purposes. This increase lead to an additional collection of customs duties in Israel. The Israeli Law allows the state to facilitate importers and waive the extra customs duties, and similar and other facilitations have been made in the past, for example, in a war or strike situation. Therefore, all that is required is the flexibility and activation of goodwill on the part of the State when interpreting the Law to relieve the importers from extra duties caused by the COVID-19 crisis.

Keywords

• customs
• valuation
• transport
• covid-19
• israel