- Trade Tariff tool
HMRC have developed a new Trade Tariff tool to check if you need to pay a tariff on goods brought into Northern Ireland from Great Britain. The tool asks a series of questions before identifying the options available to you: https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/check-if-you-need-pay-tariff-goods-brought-northern-ireland-great-britain.
- Aluminium Extrusions
On Monday 21 June, the Trade Remedies Authority published a Notice of Initiation highlighting the launch of an investigation into alleged dumping of aluminium extrusion products on the UK market. The Trade Remedies Authority is seeking information from all interested parties in order to establish whether dumping of aluminium extrusions has occurred, whether that has harmed industry and whether mitigations are required. If you consider yourself to be an interested party, you can register with the Trade Remedies Authority here – the deadline for registration is 06 July 2021.
- Temporary movement of goods GB↔NI
HMRC recently published updated guidance covering how to pay less or no duty when you move goods temporarily between Great Britain and Northern Ireland: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/moving-goods-temporarily-into-and-out-of-great-britain-and-northern-ireland.
- GB-NI Movement Guide
As part of our continuing efforts to assist businesses understand the trading rules now in place we have developed a simplified guide to try to capture all the relevant information in one place. The guide is structured to show a relatively simple product journey, followed by increasing levels of complexity, where the additional requirements are highlighted. The guide includes links to the Gov.uk and other guidance where more detail is required. We hope that you find this useful and we would welcome comments and feedback on it.
GB to NI movement guide (landscape)[6]
- Supplementary Declaration Assistant
The Northern Ireland Customs & Trade Academy have released the Supplementary Declaration Assistant. This tool provides information on completing a Supplementary Declaration and also includes details on how goods in a consignment can be grouped under a single commodity code based on their at-risk status (e.g. goods can be grouped under the commodity code with the highest tariff for all goods classified as not at-risk in a consignment): https://www.nicustomstradeacademy.co.uk/supplementary-declaration-assistant/.
- TSS – mandatory field for ‘Importer EORI’
The ‘Importer EORI’ field within the TSS portal will become a mandatory data item in the ENS safety and security declaration. TSS plan to release further updates to the system in the upcoming weeks. These will be detailed in the weekly TSS bulletins, you can access the bulletins here: https://www.nicustomstradeacademy.co.uk/resources/tss-bulletins/.
- EU VAT
From 1 July 2021, the EU is introducing a new e-commerce VAT package which will represent a change to how VAT is applied to goods you sell to consumers in Europe. The current UK threshold of £70,000 will be replaced with a single pan-European threshold of €10,000 (£8,818). This threshold will apply to the total cross-border sales by the business across the EU and not, as at present, on a country-by-country basis. This means Northern Ireland businesses selling goods to EU consumers and EU business selling goods to Northern Ireland consumers above the new threshold of €10,000, will be affected by the new rules. For further information and examples of how this is applied see EU VAT e-commerce package – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
To ease the administrative burden of businesses having to register in each EU member state where they have customers, there will be a new opt-in online One Stop Shop (OSS) quarterly VAT reporting and payment system. This means that businesses falling in scope of the new rules will no longer be required to VAT register in each of the EU member states of their customers. A business opting to register for OSS will be able to do so once in any EU member state or in the UK, provided that it is VAT registered in the EU member state or is trading with the EU under the Northern Ireland Protocol. Further information on OSS can be found Modernising VAT for cross-border e-commerce | Taxation and Customs Union (europa.eu) .
- CE Marking and labelling
If you are a business bringing in goods from GB for onward sale in NI, you will need to check these meet EU rules including around CE marking and labelling. The legislation that applies in NI places obligations on different economic actors in the supply chain. ‘End users’ are generally excluded from these obligations, i.e. consumers or businesses bringing in goods for their own use. The placing manufactured goods on the market in NI guidance provides further information.
- UKNI Step by Step Guide
The UKNI marking is a new conformity marking for products placed on the market in NI which have undergone mandatory third-party conformity assessment by a body based in the UK. The UKNI marking is not used if you are able to self-declare your goods are compliant, under the relevant EU legislation that applies in NI, or if you use an EU Notified Body for any mandatory conformity assessment/testing. In these cases you can still use the CE marking to place goods on the NI market. The attached guidance explains how to use the marking and the changes to conformity assessment.
- Guidance for Businesses on EU Regulation 2019/1020 on Market Surveillance and Compliance of Products
Article 4 of the EU Regulation on Market Surveillance and Compliance of Products requires that from the 16th July 2021, for certain products to be placed on the EU market, there must be an economic operator based in the EU responsible for compliance tasks. Under the terms of the NI Protocol, Article 4 requirements also apply to the NI market. Guidance on the new regulations provides further information. This is particularly relevant to those who sell products online, for example from GB, directly to consumers in NI (rather than via bricks and mortar shops).