Import Duties

Assessment of Duties on Unfairly Priced Imports Not Reviewed Gao ID: GGD-89-124 September 29, 1989

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Customs Service's and Commerce Department's administration of antidumping and countervailing duty assessment procedures, focusing on: (1) whether Commerce is effectively using Customs duty estimates to assess the established amounts; and (2) Customs' reporting accuracy and the content of the Commerce-established duties.

GAO found that: (1) about 30 percent of the commodity entries it reviewed had reporting discrepancies, largely because of Customs data entry problems; (2) because of reporting errors, Commerce did not effectively review Customs' duty assessments; (3) Customs officials expressed their intention to improve report accuracy through automation improvements; (4) Customs plans to establish a task force to consolidate guidance on reporting procedures; and (5) Customs officials were not reporting data needed for verifying duty settlement amounts, but neither agency studied the feasibility of collecting those data.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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