Ensure Your Goods Are Classified Properly
As a Canadian importer or exporter, you should know about upcoming
Canada Customs programs, such as AMPS
(Administrative Monetary Penalty System) and CSA (Customs
Self-Assessment). The goal of these programs is to both
enforce and reward compliance with Canada Customs regulations.
To the importer, this means that Customs will be scrutinizing
the way you classify your goods much more closely. If you
use a broker, you are still subject to fines if the goods are
misclassified. What are the chances your broker has misclassified
your goods? Well, when was the last time you got a call
from your broker with the goal of understanding exactly what the
poorly described object on your invoice represented? Without
that understanding, your broker cannot properly classify your
product, which exposes you to potential fines and/or overpayment
of duty.
If you're already seeing extra charges (often reflected as "special
handling charges") on your brokerage invoices, it may be
that the broker had to call the vendor for more information about
your customs documentation. Count yourself lucky that at least
your broker is asking.
Our customs classifications specialists can review your entire
product catalogue to ensure that all of your goods are classified
correctly. At the same time, they will look for appropriate
classifications to enable your goods to be imported at the lowest
possible duty rates. If we detect a misclassification, we
will work with you to file for any refunds that your company may
be eligible for as a result of historical overpayments to the
government. Our classification experts can also work with you
to determine the appropriate export classification for your products.
You can use this to provide your vendors with classifications
of the products they sell to you, to aid them in preparing Canada
Customs Invoices. In fact, you can even set them up with their
own password on MyNGB to
view (and update, if you wish) their product information. Your
vendors and importers can even use this information to prepare
valid Canada Customs Invoices online, using NoGlobalBorders'
ProDocs web-based document preparation service.
Finally, NGB will keep an archive of your classified products,
and if you are not a client of NoGlobalBorders (in which case
updates are free of charge), we can still monitor your catalog
and let you know if the duty and tax rates have changed, or when
the classifications have expired or changed.
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