Garaev, A. A. Withholding of Customs Duties and Taxes for Amounts Received From the Sale of Goods Detained by the Customs Authorities

Abstract: The article is devoted to the gaps and confusions in legal rules regulating distribution of monetary funds received from selling goods detained by the customs authorities. In case of monetary funds received from the sale of detained goods, customs duties and taxes are the first ones to be withheld and expenses related to the storage and sale of these goods are to be withheld on a second-priority basis. The remaining sum shall be returned to a declarant (owner of goods). Existing legal rules and provisions regulating the procedure for disposal of detained goods (their sale or destruction) do not take into account all circumstances under which the law enforcer needs to make a decision about disposal and distribution of monetary funds. The author of the article also provides examples when certain legal provisions regulating this type of legal relations contradict to other provisions. The author also shares his suggestions about how to overcome these conflicts of law. In order to analyze these contradictions between legal provisions, the author discusses the causes of these unclaimed goods which are under customs control and then detained by the customs authorities being generated. The author discusses examples of detention of goods for different reasons. In order to analyze the grounds for detention of goods, the author offers a classification of their economic and administrative reasons. It is for the first time in Russian research literature that a researcher provides a classification of reasons for generation of goods to be detained by the customs authorities. Moreover, this classification allows to overcome such conflicts of law. Judging from the classification offered by the author of the article, we can establish that the existing legal regulation is applicable only to disposal of goods detained by the customs authorities for economic reasons. If the goods are detained for administrative reasons, the aforesaid legal provisions conflict with regulations and provisions issued by other institutions of customs law and tax law and therefore prevent from withholding tax duties and taxes for amounts received from the sale of detained goods.

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