Customs to identify several motor traders resorting to under-invoicing
View(s):Sri Lanka Customs has been directed to identify and be vigilant on several motor traders including franchise holders who resort to under-invoicing with wrong declarations which results in a significant loss of revenue for the Treasury.
The Customs Department has been seizing high end vehicles believed to have been imported by producing forged documents, official sources said, adding that such importers will be black listed.
Tackling under-invoicing is not a simple issue. There is a need to carefully study it and then come up with an approach to enforce the true valuation of imported vehicles.
Customs will have to fine-tune its policy of value assessment while keeping in view the constant global price fluctuations, and also improve its governance accordingly, the sources stressed.
The Customs Valuation Committee would find it difficult to prove that its valuation of vehicles is correct as there was no basis for the determination of such a value. The allegation of motor traders against the committee was essentially because the values being considered (by Customs) were those published in foreign magazines and the Internet which are not the manufacturer’s values, the sources said.