Customs clearance is a critical process for any business planning to take it to the USA. The cross-border trade won’t allow you to do business until you clear the customs formalities. The customs office has dedicated team of professionals who help the businesses to speed up the process and release customs clearance certificate.
Startup companies find it difficult to cope up with the formalities and complicated process of the customs department. Thus, they hire customs agents or customs brokers to represent them. Established businesses have dedicated team of professionals but, for those who are new to hiring them, this article has a lot of information for your reference.
Major roles played by a customs agent:
- Make arrangements for the import: The owner or the agent must make arrangements at the port of entry before shipping the goods to the USA.
- Goods’ declaration: Once the goods enter at the warehouse of the port of arrival, the broker makes arrangements for the declaration of the goods along with the details of whatever belongs to the business owner.
- Cargo release: Once the declaration is submitted, the customs broker will have a certain time limit of 15 days to arrange for cargo release. Goods are stored at the terminal until the agent declares goods and the cargo release are completed.
- Filing forms: From summary form to other legal documents, the agent or the owner carefully verifies every document. The document is a crucial stage as that is where all the clearance process from the customs will begin.
- Calculating duties: The owner is supposed to pay calculated duties on the imported goods to the USA. Thus, the broker helps in calculating the duties and taxes on the goods as asked by the customs.
- Verify documents: A few documents that are critical include a commercial invoice, packing list, certificate of origin, LC, BOL, copies of certificates, cargo control documents, and more… The agent arranges for these documents and ensures that the data is correctly entered and filed by the owner. In some cases, the agent fills the forms on behalf of the owner.
- Trusted business: You can expect trusted business by the customs broker agency. They are licensed to perform the tasks and communicate with the customs authorities. Thus, hiring a licensed firm always helps.
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