Dispute for 2.6 million rubles: Urals customs officers in court proved the legality of additional license fees

The Ural Customs Directorate won a dispute over additional license fees being added to the customs value of goods.

The Ekaterinburg-based company imported spare and component parts for the production of electric passenger trains from 2020 to 2021. In 2022, customs officers conducted a desk customs audit. It turned out that in addition to the contract for the supply of goods, the buyer and the supplier concluded a license agreement on granting the right to use a database of articles and suppliers. For this, the Russian buyer paid a license fee to the foreign counterparty

The Customs Code of the Eurasian Economic Union stipulates that license and other similar payments for the use of intellectual property objects are added when determining the customs value of imported goods. Therefore, based on the results of the audit, the Ural Customs Directorate additionally charged license fees for the use of the database to the customs value of the imported goods

The courts of three instances confirmed that the customs authority proved the fact that the goods were supplied on the basis of the use of a licensed database. The combination of the terms of the supply contract and the license agreement indicates the possibility of importation of the disputed goods only if the parties comply with the obligations under the license agreement. Thus, more than 2.6 million rubles was additionally charged to the budget of the Russian Federation