Duty reclaim case study – Major multinational business

A major multinational business came to us with a problem – an error in their ERP had caused a large number of export transactions from a customs warehouse to be incorrectly duplicated as free circulation removals. This meant that the client had paid a large amount of import duty which should never have been paid.

The client could provide data of the exports in question but needed the details of the UK free circulation declarations in order to reclaim the duty. From product details and export dates the Langdon development team were able to write a script which would identify matching free circulation removals and create an MSS style report summarising the declarations and amounts paid incorrectly. Care had to be taken to only account for incorrect removals, as the declarations sometimes also included some correct free circulation removals.

The Langdon consultancy team assisted in applying for the duty reclaim and subsequent discussions with HMRC. A thorough review of the clients supporting documentations was conducted to ensure accuracy prior to submission.

We achieved a very positive outcome for the business, with almost £1.5 million being reclaimed successfully.