Beijing Customs and Tianjin Customs have formulated an action plan to further optimize the clearance process of cross-border trade in the region.

Beijing and Tianjin implemented the reform to integrate regional customs clearance in July 2014. In 2017, more than 70 percent of the imported and exported goods that were declared at Beijing Customs first landed in Tianjin.

According to the new action plan, businesses will now go through the process of customs declaration, examination, check, taxation, and release on their own, which will reduce the cost and time of customs clearance.

In the past, for imported goods to clear customs, foreign companies must wait for authorization from customs between each of the next steps in the process. Now, import declarations will go directly to the Risk Control Center of the General Administration of Customs, which can quickly analyze and verify the name of the goods, weight, whether they belong in any prohibition categories, and all other necessary information. After the inspections, the company can pay the taxes or release the goods with a guarantee. If on-site verification is required prior to release, customs can collect a sample and then release the goods.

After release, the tax collection and management center will analyze and verify the classification of the goods, the prices and the origins, and complete tax collection after the release of the goods through batch verification and inspection.

A customs official said that this process allows safety risks to be mainly handled at the customs clearance site of the port, while leaving tax to be processed after the goods are released, which greatly reduce the on-site customs clearance time.

In addition, companies can declare for customs and go through tax procedures electronically prior to goods arriving at the port.

By optimizing this process, goods can be declared and released within one day in Beijing. To ensure an open and transparent process and avoid improper inspection, the inspectors and the inspected will be chosen by computer randomly, and the inspection information and relevant policies will be disclosed. 

Tax collection after release is another innovation from the region's customs authorities. It allows enterprises to pick up the imported goods first in the customs clearance with a letter of guarantee issued by a commercial bank, and then make one single payment electronically for taxes accumulated throughout the month, an official at the Beijing Customs said. For companies with good records, their goods could be immediately released after they are declared, the official added.   

There are more than 4,000 company headquarters in Beijing, and their volume of imports and exports accounts for 66.9 percent of the total foreign trade in Beijing. These companies will benefit from the new policies, the official said.

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