Judgment on January 14, 2025: Import Duty Reassessment Due to Abusive Trade Practices – Trust Protection Limits

• A court ruling on January 14, 2025, addressed the retroactive collection of import duties on quota goods due to abusive trading practices.
• The ruling emphasized the scope of protection of legitimate expectations.
• The case involved a company using import licenses for duty-reduced imports, engaging in transactions with a related company that had exhausted its own licenses.
• The court found potential abuse if transactions were artificially created to benefit from duty reductions.
• The ruling stated that retroactive duty collection is not prevented by protection of legitimate expectations if the importer could have reasonably recognized the customs authority’s error due to a similar case published by the European Court of Justice.
• The plaintiff’s appeal against a previous court decision was dismissed, and the plaintiff was ordered to bear the costs of the appeal.
• The case involved import declarations of canned mushrooms from China between September 2013 and February 2015, using licenses granted by the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food.

Source: bundesfinanzhof.de

Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.

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