Customs Duties Reliefs

Duty relief schemes may allow businesses to pay less or no duty on certain imports and exports, depending on the goods, their origin, their destination, and the customs procedure being used.

Hammad advises businesses on the availability of customs duty reliefs, trade preferences, rules of origin, commodity classification, and the practical steps required to support a compliant relief claim.

Trading Outside the EU

Where a Free Trade Agreement applies, businesses may be able to claim relief through a trade preference, reducing or removing duty on qualifying goods.

The applicable rate of duty and the availability of relief can depend on several factors.

• The type of goods being imported or exported
• The country the goods are being exported to
• The country the goods originate from under the applicable rules of origin
• The correct commodity code and supporting origin evidence

To claim a trade preference, businesses must ensure that the goods are correctly classified, meet the relevant rules of origin, and that the necessary evidence is available to support the claim.

Other Duty Relief Schemes

Where no trade preference is available, other customs duty relief schemes may still apply depending on how the goods are used, stored, processed, exported, or reimported.

• Temporary Admission: For goods imported for a specific temporary use, such as exhibitions or events.
• Inward Processing: For goods imported for processing before being exported or otherwise dealt with under the applicable rules.
• Outward Processing: For goods temporarily exported for repair, processing, or other qualifying treatment.
• Customs Warehousing: For storing goods duty and VAT free until they are released or moved under another customs procedure.
• Duty Suspensions & Tariff Quotas: For certain raw materials, parts, and semi-finished products.
• Returned Goods Relief: For goods reimported after being previously exported.
• End-Use Relief: For certain goods used for a prescribed purpose.

Hammad provides practical advice on identifying available reliefs, preparing applications, reviewing historic duty payments, and addressing HMRC challenges where reliefs have been refused or questioned.

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