Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
UK and EU businesses would be hit with a collective yearly customs bill of £15bn after a no-deal Brexit, according to HMRC.
Its impact assessment said:
“The latest statistic estimate for the annual administrative burden on UK businesses from import and export declarations is £7.5bn (updated to reflect 2017 UK data) with import declarations for all EU trade in goods movements.”
It said that additional administrative costs will also apply to businesses in the EU because an export declaration from the UK will need to have a corresponding import declaration into the EU and vice versa.
This analysis comes from the trade statistics evidence base, used by the World Bank in compiling their Doing Business report in 2017. So, HMRC estimates that the static total ongoing administrative burden on UK-EU trade is £15 billion (updated to reflect 2017 data) a year.
The report also highlights that the average time taken to fill out a customs declaration form will be one hour and 45 minutes for high volume declarations but doesn’t specify for low volume. It did show that small traders importing low volumes would pay £56 per form, assuming that low volume traders would outsource their declarations.
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