About the Customs Service

The Customs Service of the Velocity Interoperability Network is responsible for the declaration of goods entering and leaving the Network, for the assessment and collection of customs duty and excise under the Common Tariff, and for the control of prohibited and restricted goods at the boundaries of the Velocity Interoperability Network. It was established on 6 September 2026 and replaces the separate customs arrangements that member organisations applied at their own boundaries.

The Service is headed by the Director of Customs and organised in four divisions: Frontier Operations, which staffs the customs posts; Tariff and Valuation, which classifies and values goods and decides disputed assessments; Trade Services, which registers traders, approves warehouses and operates deferment accounts; and Enforcement, which investigates misdeclaration and smuggling and refers cases to the Police Department and the Justice Department. Its headquarters, Customs House, is at Central Exchange, and 186 customs officers are on duty at the posts from establishment.

Responsibilities. The Service's work falls into seven areas.

Declarations: Receiving and deciding declarations of goods entering, leaving or passing through the Network: passenger declarations at the crossings, advance declarations of commercial consignments, postal declarations and declarations into and out of approved warehouses.
Duty and excise: Classifying and valuing goods under the Common Tariff, assessing the duty and excise due, collecting it before release or through deferment accounts, and paying it over to the Treasury Department.
Prohibited and restricted goods: Refusing entry to goods that may not enter the Network, checking the permits and certificates that other departments require for restricted goods, and holding or seizing goods that are undeclared or misdeclared.
Travellers: Operating the red and green channels at every passenger post, applying the travellers' allowances and assessing duty on goods above them at the simplified rate.
Traders and warehouses: Registering traders, customs agents and carriers, approving warehouses in which goods are held with duty suspended, operating deferment accounts and auditing traders' records.
Customs posts: Staffing nine posts at the boundary crossings, the two aerodromes handling traffic from outside the Network and the Central Exchange Postal Depot, and maintaining the examination bays and holding areas at each.
Statistics: Publishing quarterly figures on consignments cleared, declarations recorded, duty assessed, examinations and seizures, together with the capacity of the posts.

Working with other departments. The Service does not staff the crossings itself, does not set the rates of duty and does not decide which goods other departments restrict. Its work depends on the arrangements below, each agreed during the transition period and in force from 7 September 2026.

Borders Authority: Staffs the crossings, receives the advance declarations of carriers and transmits them to the Service, provides the holding areas and examination equipment, and records each clearance against the crossing.
Treasury Department: Sets the bands and rates of the Common Tariff and the excise rates. Duty and excise collected by the Service are paid over to the Treasury Department.
Trade Department: Advises on the classification of goods and on the trade arrangements under which reduced rates or reliefs apply.
Departments issuing permits and certificates: The Police Department, Health Department, Agriculture Department, Food Standards Office, Emergency Management Department, Communications Department, Heritage Office, Wildlife Service, Environment Department, Transport Department and Currency Office each set the conditions for the restricted goods within their responsibility. The Service checks those conditions at the boundary and refers cases to the department concerned.
Civil Aviation Authority, Ports Authority and Postal Service: Operate the aerodromes, the quay and the postal depot at which the Service's posts are located, and provide the areas in which goods arriving by air, sea and post are held for assessment.

Decisions and reviews. Every assessment, refusal or seizure is recorded and the person concerned is told the reason in writing. A traveller or trader who disagrees with a decision may ask the Service for a review by writing to contact@customs.gov.vin within 30 days, quoting the declaration or assessment reference. Reviews are decided by an officer of the Tariff and Valuation division who took no part in the original decision, normally within 20 working days. A person dissatisfied with the outcome of a review may appeal to the tribunal of the Justice Department.

For the Service's origins and the milestones since its establishment, see History; for its first statistical release, see Statistics. General enquiries may be sent to contact@customs.gov.vin.