Abstract:
Purpose and methods. Sea freight prices have risen sharply, due to the COVID-19 crisis, global shortages of ships, declining competition in the field, and containers of contagious demand. In addition, there is a “Made of Israel” reason, since due to the congestion at ports in Israel, there are ships that prefer not to dock in Israel, and then the number of ships that can dock in Israel is even smaller.
In Israel, the value for customs purposes includes the transportation costs, as in Singapore, and the majority of the states. On the contrary, the US, Australia and NZ, have chosen to exclude transportation costs, for customs value purposes.
Results. The GATT valuation agreement sets out a number of rules regarding the way goods are valued for customs purposes, but it does not stipulate any binding rules regarding transportation. Therefore, the increase in transportation costs in Israel, leads to the increase in the value of goods for customs purposes, and to a further collection of customs duties.
The Israeli law allows the state to facilitate importers and waive the extra customs duties, and similar and other facilitations have been made in the past, for example, in a war or strike situations.
Conclusions. In my opinion, if the Second Lebanon War is an unforeseen event over which the importer has no control, as well as sanctions or strikes, then the interpretation of the law could be a little more flexible, and determined that a global COVID-19 crisis, shortage of ships, containers, to be considered as special circumstances over which the importer has no control. Therefore, all that is required is the flexibility and activation of goodwill on the part of the state, when interpreting the law, in order to relieve the importers from extra duties, caused by the COVID-19 crisis.
