QUESTION: Determining the value of an assist, should demurrage charges incurred at a foreign port be considered part of the “transportation costs” to the place of production? The Customs Valuation Encyclopedia is silent on this issue and we’re not finding any rulings that address this situation. %%%%%%%%%% ANSWERS: Demurrage charges are incurred while the goods […]
QUESTION: We have a scenario where we’ve had our foreign supplier purchase equipment to manufacture our products. We then reimburse our foreign supplier for that equipment. 1. If we reimburse the foreign supplier for the equipment and allow the foreign manufacturer to maintain title to the equipment, is an assist applicable? (We reimbursed, but do […]
QUESTION: If components are sent to a foreign supplier as an assist, and a portion of the components are scrapped, what proof is required by customs to prove they were actually scrapped so that duties are only paid on the usable amount? ************* Answers: In NL we require to also pay import duty on goods […]
QUESTION: We purchased some electrical components and supplied them to a machine manufacturer in Asia. The components were incorporated into the final completed machine and we are now ready to import the machine to the US. What is the proper way to show the assist value on the commercial invoice ( we will put the […]
QUESTION: We have some products that an domestic supplier is producing for us with a mold that they produced and we paid for. Our PO# is between us and the Domestic company. They are going to an overseas company in China to have the products made and they are importing the goods into the U.S. […]
QUESTION: We provide printed retail packaging to our overseas vendor. They manufacture, package and ship to us in the US ready for retail sale. Is this an assist? ========== Answers: “Retail packing” is not necessarily an assist but is “packing costs” and is to be added to the price actually paid or payable. See pages […]
QUESTION: We have a tooling, an assist, that we are providing to our vendor located in China. However, our vendor in China is asking us to ship to their other location in Hong Kong and they will create some sort of internal tooling contract to send the tooling to their location in China. This is because […]
QUESTION: We have 20 new items that have been made with tooling and associated productions costs for a total price that we paid to our vendor.The first production run of all these items is due in, and we want to pay the whole assist up front, on the first entry, since the item is a […]
QUESTION: We procure a mold that costs $20,000 and provide it to our overseas manufacturer. The anticipated production that we need from that mold is 20,000 units, which will be imported into the US. We plan to apportion the value of the assist over the anticipated 20,000 units. However, after 5,000 units are made, we […]
QUESTION: We have a tooling that we own in the U.S. that we will be providing free of charge to a new supplier in country A to produce some component parts. The component parts are then exported to another one of our suppliers in country B for assembly into another sub-assembly component part. The sub-assembly […]
QUESTION: We found a potential missed assist while auditing and are investigating further to determine if it really is an assist and or if the values were declared as assists. Our process is always to declare on the first entry, and as this hasn’t come up before, we’re looking for advice from the membership. If […]
QUESTION: We are sending two drives to Canada for a company to test the equipment they are selling to use to make sure they work correctly. Will these drives that we send to them “free of charge” be considered an assist and would we need to add in the freight to get these drives to […]
