7/30/2019 Unsettled Valuation BUSINESS the Moscow News
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Unsettled valuation
by at 14/01/2013 23:49
Alexei ArtemyevDepartment of tax and customs tariff policy,
Finance Ministry
I would like to address particularities relating to the
regulation of legal relationships in customs, on the
example of the valuation of goods, in the conditions of Russias
membership in the WTO.
With consideration of the particularities of use by WTO member
countries of the system of adoptedagreements in the organizations
framework, the definition of customs valuation in accordance
withWTO requirements needs some elaboration.
This is prompted by the fact that the WTO agreement, including
the agreement on the use of Article VIIof the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade of 1994 (the WTO pact on the definition of
customsvaluation of goods) is used by member countries not as a
document of direct action, but as a way to reflect the position of
these agreements in the countries regulatory systems.
Because Russia follows this same approach, in our country
customs valuation has to be defined inaccordance with the
requirements of national (in relation to the WTO) normative
regulations, the basisof which is the Customs Union agreement from
Jan. 25, 2008, on the definition of valuation of goodscarried
across the unions customs border. And here the system of national
regulation in relation to theWTO, in its turn, has to correspond to
the WTOs requirements that is, in accordance with thedefinition of
customs valuation of goods, the agreement on the use of Article VII
of GATT.
Long before Russias entry into GATT and the WTO, the norms in
force here defining the customsvaluation of goods corresponded to a
significant extent to the requirements of the organization.
Atpresent, the majority of the customs valuation provisions of the
WTO agreement, as much as theexplanatory notes to the agreements
corresponding articles, is reflected in the January 2008
Customs
Union agreement. The remaining part of the provisions of the
explanatory notes cannot be reflected indocuments on a legislative
level, and therefore come into our regulation in sublegislative
normativeacts. At the current time, these are decisions of the
Eurasian Economic Commission. This process ismoving actively
enough: decisions are made by the commission, relating to rules of
the use oflegislatively established methods of the definition of
the customs valuation of goods.
One of the goals for the development of a legal basis for the
definition of the customs valuation ofgoods is the gradual
reflection, in the Customs Unions legal acts, of procedural
materials developed bythe Technical Committee on Customs Valuation
of the World Customs Organization, with the aim ofhelping countries
uniformly use the WTO agreement for the definition of customs
valuation of goods inpreparing their own national regulations.
