A Study on Imposition of Royalties and License Fees by Comparison Analysis between the WTO Customs Valuation Agreement and Korea Customs Act

Abstract

The customs value of imported goods are a transaction value based on the WTO Customs Valuation agreement. There are adjustment factors in assessing the transaction value. Among them are license fees and royalties. The fees itself is deemed to be dutiable, if two factors are met. One is that the fees should be related to the imported goods and the other is that the payment of fees should be a condition of sale. During the Post-Clearance Audit, customs authorities impose the customs duties on imported goods by assessing the two factors and deciding whether or not the fees are dutiable. However, after a litigation of the issues, we have seen that there is one more factor needed: the buyer himself should pay the fees. This comes from the interpretation of the regulation in the Korea Customs Act, There are descriptive discrepancies between the WTO agreement and the Korea Customs Act. There might be an error of the localization of the WTO agreement. We have reviewed the principle of the fees and the rule of other major countries, such as USA, EU, etc. It would be a great opportunity for our Korea Customs Act to be modernized to a global standard.