skydriller wrote:
What I cant understand why the German Customs guys absolutely decided to chase the guy for Import VAT/Duty etc. – Especially if it is not even his aeroplane, but that of an aeroclub??
Customs and import VAT are usually owed by the one who actually imported the good and not the legal owner. It would be absolutely impractical if e.g. every user of an n-reg. in Europe could tell the customs “good luck with trying to collect the import VAT from some US trust far away…”.
Btw.: This question has been explicitly discussed in the decision from the Munich court. Might make sense to read it before assuming it is faulty …
Sebastian_G, even tax services are more reasonable…
That is why you need the GENDEC? Someone stamps it at the PoE and that is your proof.
Sebastian, as you know more about German customs, would you know how they can be unversally contacted?
So that you can get a response from them. Or is it mission impossible?
Sebastian_G wrote:
Through my professional experience I did learn that customs needs to be taken much more seriouly than many people do
That I 100% agree with. Many years ago I had extensive dealings with customs all around Europe (that was before the EU was called ‘EU’) and it often was a nightmare. ATA Carnets and endless equipment lists to the rescue!
That said I still totally agree with this:
skydriller wrote:
I could understand the guy being fined and sent on his way for using the wrong airport…
Peter wrote:
Would the German police allow someone to drive at 300km/h in a 100km/h limit if German TV supported it?That is a comparison between apples and oranges. For sure I do agree with you 100% that the punishment of this unfortunate pilot has nothing to do with justice, however, the customs is still in their ‘right’ to do this, according to German law and Bavarian tax court. I agree it would be interesting to get this matter for an international court, but that is not likely to happen. So we can discuss about the “fairness” of the punishment, but not about the possible prosecution, as it should be clear to everyone by now that Germany doesn’t allow a border crossing from/to a non-EU country via an unofficial border crossing point. No matter if you pass a green border by car, or using a national (non-customs) airfield by plane. If you don’t play the game according to the customs rules, you may get into big trouble. Yes, that is not fair, but – unfortunately – a fact we need to deal with.
Let’s look at the angle I tried to address previously: “Customs PN” airports (the “other list” which I can’t find right now).
You send in the PN.
Customs don’t acknowledge it. They almost never do, and anyway most of the officers can’t/won’t speak English, and is google translate good enough?
You land.
They claim they didn’t get the PN.
You are screwed.
As someone wrote earlier, this shows the massive risk in flying to certain countries. Well, just one country AFAICT…
And – to go back to my earlier point – what about “Exit Customs on a PN” airports? You try to depart and they grab you. Or you successfully depart and they screw you on your next visit.
It makes “Customs PN” airports completely worthless.
That is not always true, for example in Switzerland, the procedure with the customs form on many small airfields works without any issues. It is clearly written how the game works on the airfield website, it is also written in the VFR Manual from Skyguide, and if you play by those rules, you simply won’t get any trouble.
For Germany, the AIP gives always a phone number behind the “CUST” entry, which one needs to call for customs clearance. Mostly, this phone number is the same as OPS, but not always. In case of Würzburg, the phone number for customs is a different one, including a seperate one for “customs” and “police”. If the phone number for CUST is the same as OPS, the Flugleiter will most likely forward the request to the customs department. Yes, you cannot check if he/she actualy did it, but you can prove that you called the correct number. Otherwise, the Flugleiter would have to lie about not receiving your call to customs officers and/or court, because in these cases, it is their duty to forward your request (for example in EDFC or EDTD). But for Würzburg, it is clearly not the duty of the Flugleiter to do anything, as his number is not mentioned in the CUST section of the AIP and the airfield is not on the A-list of German customs. Again, if the pilot would have called the correct customs number, which is mentioned in the AIP for Würzburg, he would not be in trouble right now.
I agree that there is a high risk of doing something wrong with this German ‘procedure’. So if people don’t know how to play the game in detail, we should recommend them to use official international airports from/to non-EU member states.
Peter wrote:
As someone wrote earlier, this shows the massive risk in flying to certain countries.
No, that is a completely different story. You can prove the fax/phone (technically not what you sent/said but at least that you did) and there is a way to enter the tax union via this airfield with import to temporary use. Therefore evidence indicates that you did everything right and the tax authorities need to show evidence that you didn’t.
That is quite common in German tax law: When you get an income statement from your employer that says that income tax was deducted from your salary you can trust that this is actually true – even though this obviously is no proof that your employer actually wired the money to the tax authorities.
Frans wrote:
I agree it would be interesting to get this matter for an international court,
On what basis? The German law in this case is an exact representation of the UCC. Why would a European court come to another conclusion?
Especially as in front of a European court the hurdle would be even higher as one had to prove that the original sentence (or the German law) is materially breaking European law. Even if there would be a discretion clause, the European court could not say “we would rule that differently” but only “the original court decided outside of the frame that this discretion clause grants”.
You can prove the fax/phone (technically not what you sent/said but at least that you did)
I don’t think so.
Therefore evidence indicates that you did everything right
It indicates nothing. We can get into discussion of how email works (delivery to an smtp server, etc) etc… Telex was different: by an old legal convention, the receipt was a legally valid receipt (at least in some countries) although obviously not confirming the content.
and the tax authorities need to show evidence that you didn’t
It would be pretty amazing if it worked that way round. Airport PNR certainly does not work that way round. And the non receipt of the PN enables German Customs to hit you for the import tax.
Peter wrote:
And the non receipt of the PN enables German Customs to hit you for the import tax.
Do you know a single case in the last 60 years where this happened?
@Frans, how could you prove that you talked to someone and prove that your request was correctly understood and recorded?
The OPS person can say “I was not in the tower, not sure who you talked to”, for example, and show CCTV that show that he was somewhere else.
Or if he forgot to pass the message further, he can say “I asked pilot to provide me at least some information and the pilot promised to send me an e-mail with a/c registration but did not anything”.
Unless you have an e-mail from customs or a document signed and stamped by a customs officer, how could you prove anything?
Plus, I’m not a German speaker, so if an officer writes in German language “don’t have to pay VAT if a/c stays in the coutry less that four hours” how would I know?
Of if you make an emergency landing then how could you prove anything to customs?
There are too many unknowns, and I have to agree with Peter, it appears that Germany is a higher risk country in terms of customs procedures than lot’s of others.
I agree that what’s written above might never happen, but until that pilot was forced to pay, that sort of situation did not happen either.
The trust is lost, sorry.
