Pre-Payment
A Pre-payment scheme is also available for use by declarant. This scheme is particularly useful for both Customs, who have the benefit of cash in advance and a substantial reduction in the number of transactions handled by the cashier, and the trader who has the advantage of taking delivery of the goods immediately after the removal note is issued. This scheme is very helpful / useful to regular (frequent importers) traders who import goods at large. As traders do not have to come counters for payments and refunds are directly deposited to related pre-payment accounts. Traders can also pay on the basis of any period they wish since the account can be topped up at will, thus reducing the cash-flow "problems" to a minimum. The pre-payment scheme is operating to the satisfaction of both traders and Customs.
The following procedures apply:
Prior to Declaration:
- Declarant presents a request to open a prepayment account to Customs;
- Customs accounting service opens the account in the system;
- Declarant funds his account by depositing money with Customs directly;
- Customs cashier registers the cash and the account balance is automatically updated in the system ready for declaration processing. The cash deposit is held in a special suspense account at this stage.
Declaration Processing:
- Prepayment account code is keyed in as part of the declaration input (checks are performed to ensure consistency between account holder and declarant or importer);
- At request for assessment the system checks the account balance;
- If the balance is insufficient, the assessment is refused and the declaration is stored until the account balance is increased or the mode of payment is changed;
- If the balance is sufficient, the payment is accepted and the account balance is decreased by the assessed amount. The duty/tax due is registered in the accounts file as a payment for that day under the appropriate headings. All records are updated automatically within the system from the assessment input;
- The declaration is passed to the clearance function which performs the normal checks and issues the removal note.
Ongoing Action:
- A statement of the payments and declarations attributed to the account may be printed as required;
- The account may be topped up at any time.