Customs specialization

Legal support for the foreign economic activity participants is one of major legal practices of “Solution” Law Office.

Specialists of our company provide a full range of legal services related to export and import operations, beginning from drawing up of effective international contracts to providing of legal assistance in cases of administrative offenses and criminal evasion of customs duties.

Adjustments of the customs value

The most frequent disputes with the customs authorities are appeals against the adjustments of the customs value of goods.

All foreign economic activity participants are faced with the adjustments of customs value. Someone does not want to argue with the Customs, and works at the prices imposed by the Customs, someone stops working at all, because the custom adjustments make the products uncompetitive. Our clients consider the adjustment of customs value not the most pleasant but an integral part of the procedure of import/export of goods, which ultimately becomes their competitive advantage, because our customers always win in court the cases of invalidation of decisions of the Customs upon the adjustment of customs value.

The classic way to recover the amounts of adjustments of the customs value is the appeal against the decisions of the customs authorities to adjust the declared customs value. The current legislation sets a three months term to appeal against decisions of the customs authorities, and not all the participants of foreign economic activity know how to return the amounts of adjustments on the expiration of three months from the date of a decision of the Customs.

"Solution" Law Office provides assistance in recovery of the customs value adjustments beyond the general three-month term for appealing against decisions of the customs authorities.

Positive decisions in Arbitration Courts of  Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai, as well as the Arbitration Court of Moscow, allow us to say that there are positive prospects for recovery of adjustments during the period of three years from the date of a decision of the Customs.

Refund of advance payments

No less significant for participants of international trade issues are the return of advance payments from the accounts of the customs authorities. The question of administering advance payments is the most acute when foreign trade turnover is large. Situations when substantial amounts of advanced payments are accumulated on the customs authorities’ accounts are not rare.

Refund of advance payments in the administrative order, that is, by decision of the customs authority, is possible not later than in three years from the date of making advance payments to the account of the Customs. After the deadline unclaimed advance payments are to be credited to the federal budget.

In this regard, the majority of participants in foreign economic activity consider these advance payments irrevocably lost.

"Solution" Law Office has the experience in refunding of advance payments that have been on the accounts of the customs authorities for more than three years.

Cases on administrative violations

Cases on administrative violations in the customs sphere, as well as cases of illegal use of trademarks are also one of the activities of “Solution” Law Office.

In our practice there have been cases when our clients became plaintiffs out of defendants in the same administrative case and collected from the customs authorities the losses caused by unlawful actions in the proceedings of administrative offenses or in the Customs control.

Legal support for the foreign economic activity participants

The companies, specializing in providing legal services to the foreign economic activity participants, often limit the sphere of their legal aid only to the cases on adjustments of customs value and do not deal with the issues related to the future of the transferred goods, tax consequences, customs control after the release of goods, the regulation of relations of foreign economic activity participants with the Russian contractors.

Handling several legal specializations, such as the tax practice, legal support for business allows "Solution" Law Office to provide its clients with a full range of legal assistance. It’s not unusual that client address to us as to narrow focused experts, for example, in the field of customs law, and then they address to us with the other branches of law issues.

Experience in providing of legal services in various sectors permits to avoid most of the legal problems, and when they arise, to get out honorably of any, even unpleasant situation.