Formalities and general terms and conditions of declaring and release

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Iran Customs Law : Part VI Formalities and general terms and conditions of declaring and release

Article 38: Release of the goods from customs premises shall require fulfillment of customs formalities. customs formalities of the imported goods shall be fulfilled at the first authorized customs. Iran Customs Administration shall announce authorized customs for fulfilling customs formalities.

Note: Customs formalities of ships, aircrafts or rail fleet including locomotives and wagons, whether purchased or leased from abroad shall be determined by the bylaw of this law.

Article 39: Customs formalities except those referred to in Articles 40 and 41 of this law shall be subjected to declaring of the goods by the owner of the goods or his/her legal agent through submitting a declaration in the format and the number of copies which shall be defined by Iran Customs Administration. Iran Customs Administration shall be entitled to modify the format, manner of drawing up the declaration and formalities of declaring and release of the goods as necessary.

Note 1: The manner of drawing up the declaration, documents to be attached thereto, procedures of circulating of the declaration, the manner of its examination and examination shall be determined by the bylaw of this law.

Note 2: The owner of the goods shall bear the responsibility of the accuracy of the contents of the declaration and documents submitted to the customs.

Note 3: Iran Customs Administration shall determine terms and conditions of submission of the declaration and declaring prior to arrival of goods.

Article 40: The followings shall be exempt from submission of the declaration sheet:

a .Goods which are declared and cleared by specific forms under applicable international conventions.

b . Passenger goods, gifts and souvenirs, as well as commercial samples at the discretion of the customs and the goods subject to paragraphs (a), (h), (i), (j), (q) and (u) of Article 119 of this law may be cleared by issuing a customs permit.c.

c .Goods which are released from the destination customs in form of carriage of goods coastwise

d . Release of abandoned and confiscated goods which have been exposed to sale by virtue of sale minutes of meeting and a receipt indicating the price had been received.

e . Release of con fiscated goods which are seized within the territory of the country on suspicion of smuggling and delivered to the customs, but the suspicion about which is removed.

f . Goods the exporter of which have withdrawn the exporting.

Article 41: Letters, newspapers, magazines, catalogs and the like entered by post, and bags containing mail and packages containing the press shall be exempted from submission of the declaration sheet and examination, if they are stamped by post of ficials of other countries and delivered to Iranian post of ficials provided that such bags does not contain packages of goods,
even as samples.

Article 42: In exceptional circumstances and with regard to urgently needed goods whether for public or private sector, the customs may issue a release permit for the goods with the permission of the President of Iran Customs Administration and pledge of the highest official of related ministry or government agency as well as calculating pertaining fees and issuing the order. The applicant shall be required to ful fill all customs formalities within seven working days.

Article 43: In cases where the owner of goods or his/her legal agent does not know the correct tariff number of his/her goods, he/she may, before drawing up the declaration, inquire the customs advisory opinion by submitting ownership documents and paying the charges of tariff determination. This tariff classification shall be binding for the parties, provided that it is, at the request of concerned party, referred to and determined by the customs disputes settlement commission. Persons, who want to order the goods to abroad, may also inquire the customs the goods tariff number and its import conditions by sending a sample and pro-formainvoice stating goods speci fication and expressing how long it takes that the goods enters Iran. This tariff classification shall be binding for the customs provided that it is approved by the customs disputes settlement commission and for the goods in question a letter of credit is once opened and up to one year after the service of the award by the inquiry, the opening of the letter of credit or import have been occurred.

Note: In cases where the customs determines the tariff of declared goods, if the tariff changes, the balance amount shall only be collected based on new discretion of the customs and it shall not be subject to pay a fine.

Article 44: In cases where import duties are collected based on the weight of goods, the weight of goods shall be gross weight with all internal and external wrapping and containers in normal situation when it is declared at the customs minus approximate weight of the container whose ratio with the gross weight of goods shall, taking into account wrapper and container type, be determined by the Council of Ministers.

Note: Determined approximate weight of the goods shall not include the wrapping that partially covers the goods, except the goods whose packing in practice have such a feature. Estimated net weight shall not be acceptable with regard to imported goods in bulk. In such cases the net weight of the goods shall be determined based on international common practices such as calculating draft survey of the ship.

Article 45: In case of divergence between the customs and declarant, except in cases related to whether the goods is permissible, conditionally permissible or prohibited, and where according to the customs opinion release of the goods requires to pay an amount more than what have been declared, declarant may pay import duties in cash and outright based on his/her declaration, deposit balance amount and possible fines in the form of cash deposit or bank security, and clear the goods.

Note 1: In cases where the owner of the goods who is expecting the final opinion of the customs refrains from release of the good, where the final opinion of the customs does not support the payment of an amount more than that declared by the owner of the goods, the goods shall be exempt from payments of storage fees from declaration day to the date of informing the owner of the goods of the final opinion of the customs. The owner of the goods shall be exempt from payments of storage charges for the period during of which at the discretion of the customs, government orders or regulations unreasonably prevent release of the goods and
withholding authority shall be informed of the case.

Note 2: Unless the withholding authority is not able to deliver the goods due to any reason, storage charges referred to in this article shall be financed from credit which is annually provided for this purpose in the budget law and shall be paid by the customs to the withholding authority .Additional financial burden arising from the implementation of this law shall be financed from the incomes derived from its implementation.

Article 46: If the owner of the goods who have declared his/her goods intends to declare his/her goods wholly or partially under another title, the new declaration shall be accepted provided that the goods are not released from customs and pertaining fines related to declaring contrary to the initial one are paid.

Note 1:Changing the title to personal internal transit shall be subject to approval of the customs in compliance with article 123 of this law.

Note 2: In cases where declaring of the owner of the goods is subject to smuggling provisions, the owner shall not be entitled to change the title of declaration.