Customs will take a closer look at the car – Kommersant FM

Some imported cars may become more expensive in just two months. From April 1, a unified risk management system is expected to come into force in the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union. Moscow proposed a set of rules for control of imported goods. It will have to be valid for all five member countries of the union – these are Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Vedomosti writes. The risk management system will increase the transparency of import flows and, first of all, the supply of cars.

But such purchases will become more expensive for consumers, and this will affect even cars purchased earlier, says Anton Shaparin, vice-president of the National Automobile Union: “This will be a rather difficult negotiation process, because a number of countries around Russia live off the fact that through them traffic flows began to flow into our country, including the flow of cars. Money from customs clearance of cars does not go to the Union budget with further distribution, but goes to the country where customs clearance was carried out. And our neighbors take advantage of this.

In Kyrgyzstan, the customs value is radically underestimated, for example, a Toyota Camry, which costs $30-35 thousand when purchased, is valued by the Kyrgyz at $8 thousand, and the corresponding customs duty is paid. This is a problem that they have been trying to solve for a long time through interdepartmental interaction between the customs of different countries, but it did not work out. Obviously, now they want to make such a norm mandatory.

Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan will suffer quite significantly, Armenia to a lesser extent. As for Belarus, there is another scheme, more lenient: beneficiaries are given a 50% discount on customs clearance; accordingly, the benefit recipient then resells the car and keeps a small amount for themselves. There are also such flows, and they are very significant.

In this case, we will have to wait for the goodwill of our neighbors, because without their vote no decision will be made, and there are already trillions of dollars in shortfalls at customs in the Russian Federation.”

In a unified risk management system, a profile will be created for each risk of goods, experts explained. If, for example, it turns out that the price of an imported car is less than that indicated in the profile, all customs authorities of the EAEU will have to begin inspections, says Narine Beglyarova, managing partner of Sona Private Consulting:

“Depending on the economic state of the state, customs duty rates change. For example, in Belarus there was a period when they greatly reduced customs rates in order to increase trade turnover. And even our clients told us that they now have no free cash in their “turnover”, because all of it was used for purchases.

In addition, there is the concept of traceability; when tax authorities conduct an audit, they are always interested in two questions. First: where did the product originate? Second: who is its end user? Consequently, very often the very meaning of the emergence of a product is lost, and this indicates to us the possibility of a gray scheme.

If the goods came out of nowhere, no one produced it, and there is no evidence of how it was imported, then this means, at a minimum, non-payment of customs duties, underpayment of tax payments. Honestly, this is similar to the Unified State Automated Information System for alcohol, to Mercury for meat and fish products, to KIK traceability, when we label everything and we know what kind of product it is.”

The EAEU countries account for a fifth of all imports of new passenger cars into Russia, as follows from Avtostat statistics for last year. Of the 707 thousand cars, 8% came from Kyrgyzstan, 6% from Kazakhstan, 2% from Belarus and 1% were imported from Armenia. But the most powerful flow comes from China, the PRC’s share is almost 80%.

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Svetlana Belova