Why customs holds a shipment

Where the goods sit, and who answers for them

A held shipment is not in a customs office. Between arrival and release, goods are placed in a temporary storage warehouse — SVKh in Russian shorthand. It is a commercial facility licensed to hold goods under customs supervision: the operator is a private business, the goods are under the customs authority’s control, and nothing leaves the gate without a release decision.

That is where the money starts moving. The warehouse charges storage by the day, priced per unit of weight or volume, and the meter starts running on arrival. If the cargo is still in the box, the allowance the shipping line gives for holding its container runs out and demurrage and detention begin on their own schedule. Port handling adds a third line. None of these are customs charges, and none of them pause while a question is being answered. It is why a hold that ends with no additional assessment whatsoever can still be an expensive fortnight.

The second word is declarant. The declarant is the person in whose name the customs declaration is filed: for an ordinary import, the company that owns the goods under the contract — the importer of record. A customs representative, which is what a licensed broker is called here, can prepare and submit the declaration on your behalf, and a good one earns the fee. The declaration still belongs to you. The figures in it are your statements about your goods.

This matters before the first shipment rather than during the first hold, because it settles who has to produce the evidence when a question is asked. An additional assessment, a penalty, a demand for documents — all of it attaches to the declarant. “The broker filled it in” describes what happened. It is not an answer to the question.

If a supplier offers you a door-to-door price with clearance included, ask which legal entity will be named as declarant. If it is not yours, the import is not on your books — and neither is the import VAT you would otherwise reclaim.

How a consignment gets picked for checking

Nobody could check everything: tens of thousands of consignments cross the Union’s external frontier every day: tens of thousands of consignments cross the Union’s external frontier every day. So selection is automated. Declaration data goes into a risk management system, which sets it against accumulated statistics and a set of indicators and flags what matches.

The indicators are no secret in principle, even where the thresholds are. A price noticeably below the statistical level for that commodity from that country of origin. A commodity code that sits oddly beside the description of the goods. A first shipment from a company with no import history behind it. A declared weight or volume that does not fit the goods described. A category covered by a standing risk profile on value.

Being flagged is not an accusation. It is a request to substantiate what you stated. It becomes a problem at the point where there is nothing to substantiate it with — and that is a documents problem, not a question of anyone’s good faith.

What follows takes one of a few shapes, and the shape decides what you are being asked for:

• A request for documentsRelease is suspended and you are asked to evidence a specific point. The notice states what is queried and the date by which the reply is due. Work from that document — it is the only thing that tells you what is actually in dispute.
• A documentary checkThe declaration is compared against the contract, the invoice, the packing list, the transport documents and any permits. Nobody opens a box; the file either hangs together or it does not.
• An examination of the goodsThe container is opened and the contents are checked against what the declaration says is inside. Scanning may come first, and a scan that raises a question is a reason to open.

Customs value: where an adjustment comes from

Customs value is the base on which duty is calculated, and it feeds the import VAT base as well. The starting point is the transaction value — what you actually paid your supplier. Two things make it wider than the invoice total. Carriage as far as the point where the goods arrive on the customs territory of the Union belongs inside it, so a CIF price and an EXW price for identical goods land in different places. And import VAT is charged not on the customs value alone but on the customs value with the duty added on top, plus excise where the goods carry it.

From 1 January 2026 the base import VAT rate is 22 per cent, with a reduced rate for certain categories. A company on the general tax regime and registered for VAT reclaims it as input tax. A company on the simplified regime cannot, and for that company import VAT is a cost rather than a temporary outlay. This is why an adjustment of a few percentage points on the value is not a rounding error at the bottom of a spreadsheet.

The customs authority is required to accept the transaction value where it is supported by documents and does not conflict with the data it holds. Where a declared price sits noticeably below that data, it asks for substantiation. If the reply does not stand up, the rules allow the value to be determined by another method — by reference to the price of transactions in identical or similar goods, for instance — and the difference is assessed.

This is the half-truth grey carriers trade on: they will reassess you anyway, so why bother. Reassessment lands on an importer that cannot evidence its price. An importer with the file assembled has something to put in the reply, and the argument moves onto documents, where it can be won or lost on what is in them.

Four documents carry most of that weight:

• The export declaration from the country of departureThe heaviest of the four. It shows the price at which the goods left China, filed by the seller with its own customs authority rather than written for you. Ask for it before the goods ship: once the container has sailed, all you have is a polite request.
• The manufacturer’s price listA published list explains why your number is the number it is — particularly where it is lower because of the volume you took.
• Proof of paymentThe payment order and the bank’s currency control file show that what left your account matches what you declared. Foreign trade contracts above a threshold are registered with the servicing bank in Russia, which keeps a running record of payments and shipments against each one — a paper trail you did not have to build yourself.
• The correspondence about priceThe quotation, the specification, the back and forth on discounts. It shows the figure came out of ordinary commercial bargaining rather than out of the air.

A low price can be entirely genuine: a clearance lot, a superseded model, a volume agreement built up over years. Genuineness is not what is at issue. What is at issue is whether it can be shown with documents that already existed before the goods arrived.

The other reasons a release stops

Value is the reason people brace for. The rest are set months earlier, in the contract and in the packing, and that is where they are cheap to remove. At the border they are not.

• A dispute over the commodity codeIn the Union the code is the TN VED — a ten-digit extension of the international HS nomenclature — and it decides the duty rate and the list of permits the goods need. Read the code differently and everything downstream is recalculated. For a commodity you intend to ship repeatedly, an advance classification decision from the customs authority settles the question before the first container moves rather than after it.
• Permits that are not thereDepending on the goods: a declaration of conformity or a certificate under the Union’s technical regulations, a state registration certificate, a veterinary or phytosanitary document, or a letter confirming the goods fall outside mandatory certification. Some can be obtained after arrival. Some have to exist before the goods enter. Which of the two applies is a property of the commodity, and it is knowable from the code before you sign anything.
• Digital product markingRussia runs a national marking system — Chestny Znak — covering a widening list of categories: footwear, clothing, tyres, perfume, dairy, bottled water and more. For goods in scope, the importer obtains the codes in the system, and the codes have to be on the items before the goods are released for free circulation. For some categories that means marking at the factory; for others it can be done after arrival under customs supervision, at the importer’s own cost and delay.
• Labelling and packing that do not follow the rulesSeparate from digital marking, the goods themselves carry obligations: the EAC conformity mark, the name and composition, the country of origin and the importer’s details in Russian on consumer packaging. Carton and pallet labels have to agree with the packing list. A discrepancy here shows up during examination and turns on nobody’s judgement.
• Documents that do not match the cargoThe weight on the declaration against the weight on the transport document. The quantity on the invoice against the packing list. The goods described one way in the contract and another way in the invoice. None of it is fraud and all of it stops a release, because a declaration is a statement and a statement has to be checkable against the box.

If the goods are already stuck

First, get the grounds in writing. The customs authority issues a document setting out what is queried and the period within which you have to answer. The deadline is in that document, and it is short enough that a day spent working out what was actually asked is a day you do not have. A summary relayed over the telephone is not something you can reply to.

Second, do the arithmetic. Add up storage per day, container demurrage and what you owe your own customer for a late delivery, and set the total against the amount in dispute. Sometimes accepting the assessment and taking the goods is the cheaper outcome. Sometimes it is not. Either way it is a calculation rather than a matter of principle, and it is easier to make in the first week than in the third.

Third, look at release against security. The rules provide a route where the disputed amount is lodged as security, the goods are released, and the substantive argument continues without the storage meter running. Where the declarant’s position is upheld the security comes back; where it is not, it covers the assessment. Whether the route is open for your consignment is for the customs authority to decide on the file in front of it — which is precisely why it is worth raising early, while the file is still small.

Fourth, keep the answer in one pair of hands. Three people assembling a reply over a weekend will each describe the same price slightly differently, and a contradiction inside your own submission is a new question rather than an answer, and a contradiction inside your own submission is a new question rather than an answer to the old one.

If the goods have been seized or proceedings have been opened, this has stopped being a logistics problem and become a customs lawyer’s. Nothing here is legal advice on a particular case, and delay in that situation costs more than the lawyer does.

How to stop this being a recurring event

Almost everything that stops a shipment at the border was set six weeks before it got there — while a supplier was being chosen, a contract signed and a file put together.

1. Settle the code before the contractThe duty rate and the list of permits both follow from the code. Know them before you agree a price and they land inside the economics of the deal instead of arriving afterwards as a surprise.
2. Assemble the file in ChinaThe export declaration, the price list and the proof of payment are easier to obtain while the supplier still wants your next order than six months after the container sailed.
3. Make the documents agreeDescription, weight, quantity and value have to be identical across contract, invoice, packing list and transport document — down to the character. This is the cheapest reason for a hold to eliminate and the most irritating one to have.
4. Do not understate the invoiceAn understated invoice makes an adjustment close to inevitable and removes your means of arguing about it at a stroke: there is nothing to substantiate the figure with.
5. Deal with marking before shippingIf the goods are in scope, the codes are ordered in advance, and where the category requires it they are applied abroad. Nothing about it can be begun after the container has arrived, and that is what makes it different from the other reasons here. Once the container has arrived, that question is closed.