Audit by Japanese customs

Japanese customs conduct audit to importers as regular basis annually.
The result of this audit was published in customs web site.
Approx 70% of importers are pointed out as declaration failure.

Period of audit: July 2007 to June 2008.
Number of importers audited: 5,865 companies
Pointed out as declaration failure: 4,099 companies - 69.9% of total investigation

Tax penalty by this audit is total JPY11,240,440,000.- which is equivalent to US$112millions.
This amount include shortage of duty/tax plus additional tax penalty.
This means average tax penalty by company is JPY2,740,000 which is equivalent to US$27,400.

The items which had the biggest penalty amount is electrical products. 2nd is machinery, then textile clothing, knitted clothing, and optical instrument.

The content of declaration failure is mostly short declaration of items such as raw material which was offered to overseas exporters for manufacturing, which must be included in import declaration amount, we call it as "Assist" element.

Customs valuation is somewhat difficult area for general business users to understand, however it is getting critical to know, considering this high rate of error declaration in audit.

(Source: Japan customs web site http://www.mof.go.jp/jouhou/kanzei/ka201127b.htm)