According to Attorney Mr. Xinyu Lee in SSSPO (Stein Shostak Shostak Pollack & O'Hara, LLP) Shanghai branch who is specialized in U.S. Customs laws, U.S. Customs on the “Quota Charge Statement” issued a clarification (TBT-08-002) on January 22, in which reiterated Declaration for original imports of textile products from China still available at the QCS and have the obligation to submit to the Customs check if in demand.
The United States Customs had issued a document (TBT-05-009) to show that the Chinese customs clearance products would no longer be required to submit QCS after the removal of quota against Chinese textile in 2005. However, after Sino-US textile trade managed to the memorandum of the virtual quota restriction on Chinese products, the U.S. Customs began to require importers to get the QCS ready for clearing customs again. In this clarification, QCS is no need to be submitted to the Customs when customs clearance. If the Customs subsequently requested it, importers are in duty bound to submit the document to Custom check in reasonable time.
In practice, QCS is mainly used to illustrate the flow of the cost of buying quota as the U.S Customs valuation basis. There is QCS sample issued by the foreign seller:
QUOTA CHARGE STATEMENT
I, ABC Trading Company, the foreign seller of the goods covered by invoice No. 2188, state that to the best of my knowledge and belief, the amount paid to obtain export quota for the goods was $2,500 and paid by (quota buyer) to (quota seller) and such quota charge ( is/is not) included in the invoice price.
The United State Customs official’s position has not changed all the while, namely the duty-paid price should include the quota charges paid by importers and the related third party. What’s more, the conclusion won’t be affected when sellers gain nothing on quota. On the other hand, the quota paid to the unrelated third party by U.S. Customs is not included in duty-paid price. Of course, the importer has the burden of proof at this time that the third party don’t transferred the quota to the seller, as well as the seller did not get benefit from the quota fee.
“Quota Charges Statement” on the disclosure of the quota cost information can affect the duty-paid price of imported textiles and importers’ tariff burden, especially when the quota market price reaches high. Chinese textile exporters should pay attention to the operation approach of quota fee that will be good for reduce customs clearance costs of American buyers.
