Guidance

Compliance checks: customs and international trade — CC/FS1g

Updated 1 April 2022

General information about compliance checks into customs and international trade matters

We have asked you to read this factsheet because we’ve started a compliance check. Keep it safe — you may need to refer to it during the check.

A compliance check allows us to check that all matters relating to customs and international trade are correct, including that you’re paying the right amount of tax. If you’ve paid too much, we’ll help you get a refund, and if you’ve paid too little, we’ll help you to put it right.

We carry out some types of checks over the phone. If you’d prefer us to write to you instead, you can ask us to do this if we phone you. We may ask you to give us information or documents to help with the check.

If you need help

If you have any health or personal circumstances that may make it difficult for you to deal with us, tell the officer that’s contacted you. We’ll help you in whatever way we can. For more details, go to www.gov.uk/get-help-hmrc-extra-support.

You can also ask someone else to deal with us on your behalf, for example, a professional adviser, friend or relative. We may however still need to talk or write to you directly about some things. If we need to write to you, we’ll send a copy to the person you’ve asked us to deal with. If we need to talk to you, they can be with you when we do, if you prefer.

During the customs compliance check

When we start the check, we’ll tell you what we need from you.

These checks may include visiting your business premises to:

• inspect goods and documents relating to customs and international trade
• ask for information about goods or services in the international supply chain that you provide, or will provide
• check you’re complying with any customs-related approval, authorisation, registration or licence you hold or have applied for — we sometimes carry out these visits for another government department, where the licence relates to the import or export of goods

We may also ask for further information such as:

• accounts
• bank records
• import and export paperwork
• contracts
• goods specifications
• other business documents

If we cannot agree with you about sending us information or documents, or visiting your business premises, we may have to use our legal powers to get what we need. You cannot choose to ignore an information or inspection notice if we give you one, but you do have certain safeguards when we use our legal powers.

If we visit you, you must allow us to enter your business premises. We’ll normally only visit you at home if you run your business from there or goods are stored there. Although we’ll usually make an appointment for a mutually convenient time, we do not have to tell you about a visit in advance. During a visit we may:

• begin by discussing the various aspects of the business
• examine your business records
• take details of supplies made to or by you to check the correct customs treatment in your suppliers or customers’ records
• check specific physical or administrative areas of the business, where these are relevant to an approval, authorisation, registration or licence you hold or have applied for
• inspect the premises and any goods on the premises
• take samples to help classify and identify the goods
• mark goods, documents or items to show we’ve inspected them
• ask for your help when carrying out a physical inspection
• detain or seize goods found to be held contrary to customs law

You can speak to the officer who’s dealing with the check if you:

• are not sure why we’re asking for something
• cannot do what we ask
• think that something we’ve asked for is unreasonable or not relevant to the check
• have any other questions at any stage of the check

If we find something wrong, we’ll work with you to put it right. We’ll:

• explain and discuss any areas of concern and agree any further action
• tell you about any amounts overpaid or underpaid and explain how the payment or claim can be made
• send a demand if payment is due
• send a letter confirming our findings and agreed actions or recommendations if appropriate

During a check the officer will not usually have time to look at all your records and may not spot every error contained in your accounts. You must not assume at the end of any check that you’re accounting for all taxes and duties correctly.

For more information on the compliance check process, go to www.gov.uk/hmrc/taxcompliancesupport.

Use of open source material during a compliance check

We may observe, monitor, record and retain internet data which is available to anyone. This is known as ‘open source’ material and includes news reports, internet sites, Companies House and Land Registry records, blogs and social networking sites where no privacy settings have been applied.

Our privacy notice

Our privacy notice sets out the standards that you can expect from us when we ask for information or hold information about you. Go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘HMRC privacy notice’.

If you need more time

If we’ve asked you to do something and you need more time, tell us. We may agree to allow extra time if there’s a good reason, for example, if you’re seriously ill or someone close to you has died.

Information and documents we can ask for

We can inspect any documents about the business. This includes information held on computers or data storage devices.

You must give us any documents or information we ask for that relate to the business. If you fail to give us the information or documents asked for, we may charge you a penalty.

We have the right to remove any records. If we remove any original records we’ll give you a receipt, keep the records secure and return them to you as soon as we can. If you need them back sooner, we’ll make copies and give these to you.

Third party enquiries

Sometimes we may need to get information, that’s relevant to your goods or services, from other people. If we do this, we will not reveal any more about you than is necessary to get the information we need.

About the penalties that we may charge

You may have to pay a penalty if you’re found to have broken European Union and UK customs law on the import, export and holding or processing of goods under customs supervision. This includes, but is not limited to:

• infringements of customs regulations
• failure to comply with any customs-related approval, authorisation, registration or licence
• misdeclarations
• failure to comply with a customs procedure
• failure to produce information
• failure to keep records
• inaccurate returns or documents
• unauthorised removal of goods from customs supervision

You can find out more about penalties in Notice 300: customs civil investigation of suspected evasion and in Notice 301: civil penalties for contraventions of customs law. Go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘Notice 300’ or ‘Notice 301’.

If you disagree

If you disagree with anything during the check tell the officer dealing with the check what you disagree with and why.

Before issuing a decision, we’ll normally write to you explaining our intended decision and the reasons for it. You have 30 days to respond if you disagree. When we’ve received your response or after 30 days (whichever is the earlier), we’ll make our decision, considering any further information given or points raised.

You can appeal against most of the decisions that we make. We’ll write and tell you when we make a decision that you can appeal against. We’ll also explain the decision and tell you what to do if you disagree.

You can find out more about this in factsheet HMRC1 ‘HM Revenue and Customs decisions — what to do if you disagree’. Go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘HMRC1’.

If the decision is about the return of goods seized from you, go to www.gov.uk/customs-seizures.

What happens if you give us information that you know to be untrue

We may carry out a criminal investigation with a view to prosecution if you:

• give us information that you know to be untrue, whether verbally or in a document
• dishonestly declare the wrong amount of duty or claim payments to which you’re not entitled

Your principal rights and obligations

You have:

• the right to be represented — you can authorise anyone to act on your behalf
• an obligation to take reasonable care to get things right — if you have an adviser, you must still take reasonable care to make sure that any returns, documents or details they send us on your behalf are correct

The ‘HMRC Charter’ explains what you can expect from us and what we expect from you. For more information, go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘HMRC Charter’.

Compliance checks that this factsheet relates to

This factsheet relates to compliance checks for the following:

Anti-Dumping Duty
Agricultural Levy
CAP Charges
Community Transit
Compensatory Interest
Countervailing Duty
Customs Duty
Import and Export Licences
Import VAT
Preferential Trade Agreements
Prohibited and Restricted Goods

More Information

If you’re unhappy with our service

Tell the person or office you’ve been dealing with. They’ll try to put things right. If you’re still not happy, they’ll tell you how to make a formal complaint.

This compliance checks factsheet is one of a series. For the full list, go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘Compliance checks factsheets’.