Customs Law

Seriously, I'm alive and well. I have been busy at work, which is a good thing. But, there also have not been too many interesting customs law developments of late. Certainly not anything that seems to warrant a post. I'll get to the gold works case soon enough. I even looked at the healthcare decision to see whether the Supreme Court used the Harbor Maintenance decision as a basis for defining the healthcare penalty as a tax. It didn't. I hope everyone is enjoying their summer. I intend to keep posting. If anyone has any topics they think might merit a post, let me know. Otherwise, I'll be on the lookout for things. My normal goal (which I often fail to meet) is a post a week. Let's see whether we can't get back to that.

In what may be a major change in customs value law or might turn out to be theoretical point of discussion for accountants and lawyers, Customs and Border Protection has issued a notice revoking HQ 547654 . The impact of this is that more inter-company transactions will be permitted to be appraised under the transaction value method provided the written transfer pricing policy satisfies certain criteria and even if that policy calls for post-entry price adjustments. That last bit had been the sticking point for CBP. We discussed this possibility last year here . The critical criteria are that: The be a written “Intercompany Transfer Pricing Determination Policy” is in place prior to importation and the policy is prepared taking IRS code section 482 into account;  The U.S. taxpayer uses its transfer pricing policy in filing its income tax return, and any adjustments resulting from the transfer pricing policy are reported or used by the taxpayer i...