CN14-024, Publishing of Rulings Issued by the Canada Border Services Agency

CBSA has recently published Customs Notice 14-024: Publishing of Rulings Issued by the Canada Border Services Agency. The text of the notice follows.

Members will note that CSCB has been asking for this for quite some time. The CSCB Trade Compliance will be reviewing this in detail. We welcome any comments members may have on this notice. Please send those to cscb@cscb.ca.

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1.   The purpose of this notice is to inform the trading community of upcoming changes to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) policy on the publishing of advance rulings and National Customs Rulings (NCR) and the mandatory elements that must now be included in all requests for all rulings.

2.   Departmental memoranda, D11-4-16, Advance Rulings Under Free Trade Agreements, D11-11-1, National Customs Rulings (NCR) and D11-11-3, Advance Rulings for Tariff Classification, will be amended by September 30, 2014 to reflect these changes.

3. Effective September 30, 2014, the CBSA will require applicants of advance rulings and NCRs to either consent or not consent to the publication of their ruling letters, in their entirety, on the CBSA website.

4. As of September 30, 2014, all requests for advance rulings and NCRs must include a statement indicating that the applicant either consents or does not consent to the CBSA publishing its ruling letter in its entirety.

5. The specific wording of the consent statements, one of which must be included, verbatim, with each request for a ruling, is available in appendices to each of the amended Departmental memoranda: D11-4-16 – Appendix E; D11-11-1 – Appendix C and D11-11-3 – Appendix B.

6. A ruling request that does not include one of the statements set out in the Departmental memoranda will be considered incomplete and will not be processed until such time as one of the statements is provided by the applicant.

7. There is no obligation on the applicant to consent to the publication of its ruling letter. Not authorizing the public release of a ruling will have no bearing on any CBSA decision with respect to the ruling(s), nor will it have any impact on the CBSA’s processing of the importer/authorized representatives request.

8. Published rulings are binding only upon the CBSA and the person to whom they are issued.

9. Rulings that are published will be available as a resource providing guidance to the importing community.

10. While published rulings in respect of the same or similar goods or circumstances may be of assistance to an importer, they cannot be relied upon as formal “reason to believe” for import purposes.

Additional Information

11. For more information, from within Canada, call the Border Information Service at 1-800-461-9999. For additional information, from outside of Canada, call 204-983-3500 or 506-636-5064 (long distance charges will apply). Agents are available Monday to Friday (08:00 – 16:00 local time / except holidays). TTY is also available within Canada at 1-866-335-3237.