By NATARIo McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

CUSTOMS brokers expressed “shock and surprise” over several new fees which took effect yesterday, with one telling Tribune Business it would take several days to get up to speed with the Budget-related adjustments.

Several brokers contacted by Tribune Business expressed particular surprise over a new ‘Environmental Levy’ introduced by the Government.

Ulric Armbrister, manager at T&A Enterprises, told Tribune Business: “There is an environmental fee that they are now putting on tyres coming in. Persons bringing in bicycles tyres will have to pay $1 per tyre along with the duty.

“Motorbike tyres are $5 per tyre and that’s along with the duty. Aircraft tyres are $25 per tyre, new car tyres are $5 per tyre and rethreads are $10 per tyre.

“Refrigerators coming in with an efficient rating rated at 15, it’s $15 per refrigerator. There’s a whole list of changes and different rates of duties. Motor cars you’re bringing in now are $200 per vehicle,” Mr Armbrister added.

“It’s basically an increase in taxes, there’s no other way to analyse it. I also manage an air freight company, and before, when we had a flight coming, the only thing we had to pay was a landing fee depending on the type aircraft you’re using.

“Right now, every cargo flight that comes in pays $75 upon arrival, and $75 upon departure, along with the landing fee.”

Mr Armbrister added: “What it’s really going to cause is the cost of living to go up. We’re going to have to put charges in place to recoup the money that is being spent.

“They even have some fees Customs is charging you to process certain forms. For instance, if you have perishable goods you have to pay $25. If you have something in Customs warehouse you have to pay $25 just for them to process the documents, when some time ago this was totally free. I don’t think the business community is going to take this lightly.”
 Wendall Lewis, head of Alliance Customs Brokers, told Tribune Business his firm had also faced “challenges” from the fee changes.

“We are dealing with those changes right now, and we have to go out and get all the laws, the Tariff, the regulations under the Customs Management Act, they all become effective today,” he said.

“I know that my brokerage department had some challenges this morning. We had some rejections come back because of the 1 per cent administrative processing fee. They told me that they had some entries come back because of the 1 per cent.

“I’m working with the ISL system that has somehow been tied in with Customs’ systems, and so it’s upon my ISL software guy to make sure of the update and that everything is running smoothly, but I still have to go out and get all of the laws and stuff like that. It’s going to be a couple of days before we sort this out.”

The Government has imposed a 1 per cent Customs processing fee based on specific entry value. This replaces the $10 Stamp Tax per entry, and is capped at a maximum of $500.
 “Stamp Tax is 1 per cent of the cost, insurance, freight (CIF) value. The minimum is $10 and the maximum is $500. That’s extremely significant because if you have something with a value of say $12,000, your CIF value would have been just $10, but now it has increased to $120 or something like that, so that’s an additional $120 you would have to tack on to your price. Then there is a levied environmental fee that was added as well. That’s something completely new,” said one broker.