EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
CUSTOMS ACT 1901
CUSTOMS REGULATIONS (AMENDMENT)
STATUTORY RULES 1990 NO. 148
ISSUED BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR SMALL BUSINESS AND CUSTOMS
Section 270 of the Customs Act 1901 (the Act) provides in part that “The Governor-General may make regulations not inconsistent with this Act prescribing all matters which by this Act are required or permitted to be prescribed or as may be necessary or convenient to be prescribed for giving effect to this Act or for the conduct of any business relating to the Customs ...”
The Statutory Rules amends the Customs Regulations (the Regulations) to declare goods specified in Regulation 42 of the Regulations to be goods for which there is no obligation upon the owner to keep commercial documents relating to the goods for a period of 5 years.
Background
Section 240 of the Act was introduced last year as part of the Customs package of measures to tighten control over the short-payment of duty for imported goods. Together with stronger penalties for false or misleading statements made on import documentation which result in a short-payment of duty, new post-entry audit powers were provided in Sections 214AA and 214AB. A corollary of the audit powers was the new requirement in new Section 240 that “import” documents be retained for a period of 5 years.
Subsection 240(7) of the Act provides a head of power for the exemption by regulation of classes of persons or kinds of documents from the record keeping obligation.
It is the intention of new Regulation 79A to prescribe documents relating to the classes of goods referred to in regulation 42 of the Regulations as documents of a kind to which the 5 year record keeping obligation of Section 240 does not apply. The classes of goods referred to in Regulation 42 are:
• goods contained in the personal baggage of a passenger in a ship or aircraft, not being goods that, to the knowledge or belief of the passenger, are intended to be sold, or used in the course of trading, in Australia;
• goods contained in the personal baggage of a member of the crew of a ship or aircraft, not being goods that, to the knowledge or belief of the member, are intended to be sold, or used in the course of trading, in Australia;
• goods, not being goods included in a class of goods specified in the above dot points, imported otherwise than for the purpose of being sold, or used in the course of trading, in Australia;
• goods the value of which does not exceed $1,000, being goods constituting one consignment by post by the same person to one person in Australia;
• goods the value of which does not exceed $250, being goods that are all consigned (otherwise than by post) by the same person to one person in Australia and are all transported to Australia in the same ship or aircraft;
• containers;
- that were manufactured in Australia;
- that are, when imported into Australia, the property of a person carrying on business in Australia; and
- that were the property of that person when, and have remained the property of that person since, they were exported or last exported from Australia;
• containers, other than those referred to above, that are intended for use principally in the international carriage of goods.
(S.R. 145/90)