- 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.
