On January 18, 2023, certain changes to the procedure governing international postal shipments came into force, namely, paragraphs 1, 3, 4, 6–8, 10, 11 of Section I of the Administrative Law No. 1999-IX dated January 25, 2022, which amend the Customs Code of Ukraine. These are important changes that will speed up the customs clearance of parcels, as well as make it impossible to calculate the incorrect amount of tax and duty. We also asked Nova Poshta to evaluate the practical effect of these changes.

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First, a bit of context to navigate the topic — if you remember, at the beginning of 2022, the Council approved changes to the customs and tax codes to simplify the administration of international shipments and returned duty-free import of parcels worth up to 150 euros (previously, namely in the summer of 2019, limit) from 150 euros to 100 euros). So, the new (old) limit for duty-free import of parcels from abroad of 150 euros came into effect on April 30, 2022 (we wrote about it in more detail in a separate post), and for other changes, the legislators provided for a transition period of six months. A separate mention is the controversial provision on name tracking of international parcels — the authors of the bill proposed to make postal and logistic delivery operators responsible for collecting copies of passports and identification codes of parcel recipients. In the end, after criticism from postal operators and public publicity, this norm was removed from the final version of the document — the corresponding amendments were made in the summer of 2022.

Updating customs clearance of international parcels

The new rules entered into force on January 18, 2023 – they refer specifically to items 1, 3, 4, 6–8, 10, 11 of Section I of Law No. 1999-IX dated January 25, 2022. These changes bring Ukrainian legislation into line with EU legislation.

The key innovation is the transition to an electronic document flow format with the introduction of temporary and additional registers of international postal and international express shipments instead of customs declarations. These registers will be provided by the postal operator or express carrier in cases where the total invoice value of the goods does not exceed the equivalent of 150 euros for businesses and 10,000 euros for citizens.

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How it will work in practice — evaluation of “New Mail”

The Nova Poshta company expects that the update of customs clearance in the future (after adaptation to the changes) will speed up the customs clearance procedure for international parcels — according to Yuriy Benevytskyi, CEO of Nova Poshta Global, it will happen “several times faster.”

As for the changes for Ukrainians, now carrier companies need to take additional information from customers, namely a detailed description of the product, its exact name and characteristics. It is not enough to indicate that this is an electronic gadget, it is necessary to specify what kind of product it is. In addition to the specific manufacturer and exact model name, additional information may be required, such as the power of the generator.

Below is the full comment of the top manager of the Nova Poshta company:

“This is the implementation of Ukrainian legislation to European legislation. The new changes relate to the updating of customs clearance, namely the transition of Ukraine to the electronic format of document circulation. This will happen due to the electronic data exchange of two systems: customs and business. As a result, customs clearance should take place several times faster. But everything takes time, and that is why the state has provided for a six-month transition period for operators of international shipment delivery, which simplifies the adaptation of new conditions.

However, now carrier companies need to take additional information from customers, namely a detailed description of the product, its exact name and characteristics. For example: for now it is not enough to indicate that this is an electronic gadget, but it is necessary to specify – that it is a computer mouse of such a manufacturer and such a model, or a generator of such a brand, model name, power, etc.

These data help to assign a special code to the goods, according to which the appropriate amount of taxes and duties is calculated. Such a system in the future will speed up customs clearance and eliminate the possibility of charging an incorrect amount of tax and duty both in Ukraine and in other countries of the world.”

Yuriy Benevitskyi,

CEO “Nova Poshta Global”

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It remains to remind that preferential customs clearance conditions (with the application of zero VAT/duty) of certain critical categories of goods – generators, batteries, charging stations, Starlink and others – continue to apply in Ukraine. And taxes Which exactly? Import duty of 10% of the invoice value and VAT of 20% of the invoice value, taking into account the amount of import duty, must be paid only on the excess amount. For example, if the price of the product is 180 euros, then payments are calculated and paid from the amount of 30 euros.