Ukraine has a significant not just territorial but human resource as well. Each person is a potential consumer for the manufacturer.
We are currently able to observe a rather interesting tendency. On the one hand, Ukrainian manufacturers tend to look for market outlets abroad, because the resident there has higher average earnings and, accordingly, competitive purchasing power. On the other hand, foreign manufacturers consider Ukrainian market with significant consumer potential. For example, according to official data, the population of Ukraine in 2017 is 44.03 million people (32nd place in the world). To put that in context, the population of Poland is 37.95 million, Lithuania – 2.872 million, the Netherlands – 17.02 million.
Svitlana Moroz, a managing partner of the “DICTUM Law Firm” company.
Cost loading
The central focus of the importer while entering the Ukrainian market should be the calculation of cost loading – an economic component. After all, the purpose of any business is a certain level of its marginal component.
Quite often, it is necessary to observe when the importer begins to study and investigate the market, to formulate a marketing strategy, to search for ways of production distribution, however, we recommend, first of all, to start with the economic component and taking into account customs rules of Ukraine.
In particular, to calculate the financial component it is necessary to predict the tax burden. For example, nowadays, when importing products, the value-added tax is 20% of the invoice amount. If the imported production does not have a Euro-1 certificate (the presence of which, according to the agreement with the EU, dispenses from paying import payments), an import duty is paid additionally, which can range from 5% to 15%. It is also necessary to consider the cost of the customs broker services.
Moreover, in case of conflict situations with the customs control authorities, it may be necessary to attract lawyers, which will also increase the expense part of the delivery procedure.
Consequently, the cost loading for customs clearance of the goods can reach about 40% of the goods cost. In addition, the party purchasing such a product in Ukraine should add its own margin profit to obtain certain income. The given financial indicators should be taken into account in order to understand the final cost of the goods for the consumer. In addition, an understanding of the full final price of a product affects the formation of a marketing strategy that will help to clearly distinguish market outlets.
Currency control
One should not neglect the rules of customs control and forget about the specifics of currency transaction regulation in Ukraine. In particular, in the territory of our state, state control over foreign exchange operations is carried out.
Residents, who purchase imported goods, have to report to the banking institution within 180 days and the bank – to the bodies of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine. The rules of currency control are often not followed by importers, which results in imposing fines on them and the need for obtaining individual permits for import operations. In most cases, the violation of the rules of customs control is associated with circumstances unrelated to the importer – delayed delivery of goods, delayed launch date or delayed production, lack of goods, etc.
Adjustment of the customs value of the goods
Also, one of the peculiarities of the state regulation of import operations is monitoring the pricing of goods by the customs authorities.
The current legislation allows customs control authorities to monitor prices of similar to imported products goods, to investigate the cost of products of the original producer, to compare prices of the producer of such products and the specified by the importer price in the invoice.
Moreover, the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine carries out its own customs register with prices for goods. Quite often, customs authorities make adjustments to the customs value of the goods in cases of discrepancies found between the amount indicated in the invoice and the cost of products, which is noted in the register.
Such an adjustment leads to an increase of sums while paying VAT and customs payments. And in the event when the importer does not agree with the adjustment of the customs value of the goods, he is expected to have a fairly long legal proceedings.
Patent trolling
Patent trolling is one of the types of unfair competitive struggle. Unfairness lies in the registration of patents for already existing inventions, industrial designs or useful models. Then such patents are registered in the customs register of objects of intellectual property rights. During operational import execution, the customs control authorities verify the presence of proper rights to import the goods. In the case of information in the customs register of intellectual property rights items regarding the registered patent, respectively, the importer must provide the consent of the patent owner for the import. The owners of such patents, as a result, carry out blackmail and financial extortion.
As for the legality of the actions of customs control authorities, I will provide the official statistics. As for customs disputes, in 2009, 3362 customs cases worth 1.7 billion UAH were considered, 1455 of which were solved in favor of the customs worth 848.6 million UAH, which is 44 per cent of the total number of customs disputes. In 2015, 2900 customs cases worth 933.9 million UAH were considered, 1137 of which were solved in favour of the customs worth 551 million UAH, which is 39 per cent of the total amount of customs disputes. In the same period of 2016, 769 cases worth 340.2 million UAH were solved in favour of the customs authorities, which is only 32.7 per cent out of a total amount of 2352 cases worth 340.2 million UAH amount.
Over nine months of 2017, the share of tax and customs disputes, decided by the courts of various instances in favour of the fiscal services out of the total number of tax and customs disputes settled by courts of different instances (the quantitative effectiveness of the consideration of tax and customs disputes in a judicial proceeding), was 48, 8%.
The mentioned statistics show that in more than 50% of cases, the fiscal service authorities take unlawful decisions. This situation clearly does not contribute to the increase in the number of import operations, so when importing, we recommend you to immediately calculate all risks.
