International trade, customs, and export controls advisory

Excise

Excise duties are a consumption tax on the use of specific products: alcoholic beverages, manufactured tobacco and energy products. These products are regulated at an EU level. At a Belgian level coffee and non-alcoholic drinks are additional products that are subject to national excise duties. Excise is characterized by a complex legal framework where common EU provisions (Directives) are intermingled with national legislation. Navigating these rules and ensuring compliance can be difficult. 

PwC can help with: 

• a Strategic analysis of the impact excise rules has on your companies operations. This would help you navigate towards the most efficient approach and opportunities to reduce risks related to excise. 

• Excise authorizations and licenses. If you need to transform, produce, store or move excise goods in the EU, you can apply for different licenses to enable duty suspension. Depending on your position within the good’s supply chain, another layer of authorizations will be required. PwC is able to provide you with the best advice or compliance support concerning excise authorizations and licenses based on long and outstanding expertise in this field. 

ESG and the energy transition

Excises are a typical instrument to change behaviour in the consumption patterns and as such, are key in the ESG agenda. Significant revenues are currently linked to the use of combustion fuel where the electrification has a big impact. 

Different environment of health taxes such packaging taxes and recycling schemes are based on excise duty principles.

Trade Regulatory, Export Controls and Sanctions

International trade involves a broad spectrum of regulatory controls. Businesses must learn to evolve and adapt in a fast-changing regulatory landscape during an unstable political climate. 

• Export controls and Sanctions

Recent world events including the unwarranted invasion of Russia on Ukraine, the trade wars and increased public attention brought the export controls and sanctions discussion to the forefront of companies and government’s agendas. 

Our dedicated specialists can guide you towards compliant business operations with export controls and sanctions requirements (including US extraterritorial control applicability). The team can cover full scope of obligations related to your: 

- Products: analysing portfolio to identify risk areas, dual use and items that have a potential to be used for military purposes, dual use code classification, product master data management, etc.

- Markets: guidance on the actual application of the country/ regions sanctions on your products and operations

- Business partners: screening against sanctions lists, ownership and control investigations, analysis of applicability of the sanctions on your operations

- End use: identify compliance red flags within your supply/value chains and training of the business to manage risks

• ESG-regulations

With ESG on the agenda, more and more controls are expected and will be triggered automatically at the border when importing or exporting products, by example timber, deforestation, forced labour, CBAM, and others. PwC can help you identifying the impact on your companies operations and support you with fulfilling the obligations. 

• Market access

With the Market Surveillance Regulation active as of June 2021, the market controls of (non-food) products has been moved to the border for more than 70 pieces of legislation (import only). It is of high importance that products imported into the EU and circulating on the EU market meet all EU regulatory standards concerning safety and consumer protection. 

Trade Governance and Programs

Having an appropriate and right-sized compliance program and international organisation is a prerequisite and enabler to fully tap into the market potential, both activity wise and geographically. Good customs governance enables companies to tackle challenges related to Customs, Excise and Export controls. An efficient framework will not only improve your relationship with the customs authorities, it can also be the source of financial savings and reduced administrative burden. 

PwC can help with: 

• defining the optimal trade organisation supported by appropriate policies and processes

• preparing your company to apply for AEO certificates

• building and Internal Compliance Programme to manage export controls and sanctions obligations

• conciliating risk management, governance and legal requirements through a tax control framework

• keeping you competitive and updated  by continuous Learning programs

• Target operating models: We help you to optimize, reorganise  and  standardise your customs operations from a global point of view

Trade Automation

Trade automation enables businesses to manage trade compliance complexities and gain insights into key areas of trade compliance risks and customs planning opportunities. EU Authorities use multiple systems for declarations, tracking the movements of goods etc. This is driven by the MASP of the Commission (Multi Annual Strategic Plan) and will lead to a lot of changes in the coming years. Common systems are PLDA (import and export in Belgium), NCTS (transit movements) and EMCS (Movement of Excise goods).

Our team can support your trade automation journey with: 

• Support you in your ERP transformation journey to cover trade fundamentals. The objective is to build a robust architecture that creates a strong baseline for current and future enhancements related to data, processes, organization and systems, as well as visibility and transparency into trade operations.

• Implement trade management solutions (including SAP GTS) covering Product classification, Export controls and Sanctions requirements, Customs filing, Special Customs procedures and Trade preference management. The combination of our technical and regulatory expertise helps to get the most out of the system.

• Bring solutions to make customs data visible and to analyse, process and consolidate data in view corrective actions such as duty refunds.