In an interview with Radio Economics, Mehrdad Jamal Arounaghi said, "The reference authority to determine the type of imported paper had to be specified for the customs office so that the printing and writing paper could be imported into the country without imposing 9% VAT, and the cost price could be lower."
Stating that the classification of the imported goods is based on coordinated system codes, he said, "the imported goods to Iran are also classified and coded with international six-digit codes so that the tariffs for paper and other goods are clear in order to receive customs duties."
The technical and customs affairs deputy of Iran's customs while pointing out that the customs duties are received according to the system and the policies adopted by the government, continued, "The source of obtaining customs duties in Iran differs for various imported goods as per the specific policies which has been determined."
He also said, "For example, the imported writing and printing paper is classified in the row in which the tariff is 5%. In fact, the imported printing and writing paper is subject to 5 percent tariff without the need to pay VAT."
Jamal Arounaghi added, "The raw of tariffs for the paper other than printing and writing type is 15 percent and is subjected to 9 percent VAD, so the type and nature of the imported paper should have been specified for the customs."
Stating that the measure has been taken to specify the types of paper so as to avoid undermining the government's rights and to receive correct customs duties, he argued, "There were disputes on how to classify paper type because the reference authority to determine whether the imported paper is classified as writing and printing type or not was unclear."
The technical and customs affairs deputy of Iran's customs continued, "Based on the documentation of different organizations, there is no supervision on paper consumption, and since there is no monitoring after the clearance, no comments were made in this respect."
He added, "In this regard, different correspondence has been made, and the matter has been referred to the deputy of the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade who held a tripartite meeting with the presence of the Iran's National Standard Organization and the customs in which the regulations were specified in a directive."
Emphasizing that the mentioned directive was communicated to the customs yesterday, Jamal Arounaghi said, "The stated regulations have been about grammage of the considered paper and a number of exceptions."
Pointing out that according to the directive on imported paper, the grammage up to 250 can be used as printing and writing paper, he stated, "Currently the standard of paper type detection is specified for the customs; therefore, the problem of a great part of 23 thousand tons of paper in the Shahid Rejaei customs will be resolved."
In the end, the technical and customs affairs deputy of Iran's customs reminded on the Radio Economics, "9,000 tons of 23,000 tons of paper have been cleared in the Shahid Rejaei Customs in recent years."
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