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Chief to be deposed in August
[ February 2, 2018 // Chris ]HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) said it would begin a phased launch of Customs Declaration Service (CDS) – the replacement for its Chief computer system – in August 2018. All declarations should take place on CDS from early 2019.
However, Chief will continue to run for a time to aid the transition to CDS, HMRC added. It is one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated electronic services for managing customs declaration processes but, at nearly 25 years old cannot be easily adapted to new requirements.
HMRC is currently building and testing CDS with industry, software providers and Community System Providers.
It also points out that the decision to replace CHIEF with CDS was made before the EU referendum, but the new system will be scaled up to handle any increases in declarations that result from the UK’s exit from the EU. However, some concerns have been raised in the trade between the short time window between the planned launch of CDS and Brexit in March 2019.
Like Chief, CDS will process declarations for goods entering and leaving the UK or EU through ports and airports, calculate and pay the correct duty and taxes and complete customs information electronically. However, users will need to sign into CDS on GOV.UK through a Government Gateway account.
CDS will offer several new and existing services in one place – for example, traders will be able to view previous import and export data on pre-defined reports, check tariffs, apply for new authorisations and simplifications, and check their duty deferment statement.
Online help will include self-service tools, guides and checklists.
Some additional information will be required for declarations in order to align with the World Customs Organisation Kyoto Convention, currently being implemented in the UK under the EU’s Union Customs Code (UCC) including an audit trail of previous document IDs, additional party types, such as the buyer and seller and possible additional commercial references or tracking numbers.
To align UK customs data with international standards, there will also be changes to the location of goods identification (based on UNLOCODE), the warehouse type code list, item tax lines, including method of payment codes, unit of quantity codes and the number of items on a declaration – CDS will allow a maximum of 999 items on a customs declaration instead of the current 99 items on CHIEF
An updated tariff manual will be available in April 2018.
Importers, exporters or their agents will be told by their software provider when they need to provide the additional information in order to start making declarations on CDS.
Send your name and email address to communications.cds@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk to register for email updates.