Action required by non-established companies: The Spanish Customs authorities will start applying to the letter the definition of “Exporter” in the Union Customs Code

The Spanish Customs Tax Authority has published a note to remind companies that, as per next November 4^th 2020, they must be “established in the EU” in order to appear as exporter in an EU export declaration (SAD) before the Spanish Customs. In doing so the Spanish Customs authorities are so applying the definition of “exporter” contained in the new Union Customs Code (UCC). 

According to the UCC “any person having its registered office, central headquarters or permanent business establishment in the customs territory of the Union[3] is considered to be established in the customs territory of the EU. 

In practice, as per November 4^th, the Spanish Customs Authorities will check that the place of establishment of the EORI number corresponding to the exporter mentioned at box 2 in the export declaration (SAD), appearing at the European EORI database, is in an EU member state. If such EORI appears as registered with a non-EU place of establishment the SAD will be rejected. 

This strict enforcement of the UCC definition of “exporter” by the Spanish Customs Authorities since the next 4th November may have a significant impact in the business o non-EU resident companies planning to export from Spain, being urgent that they check that their EORI is registered with a place of establishment in any EU member state. This can be done at the site “EORI number validation” of the European Commission. 

Those non-EU resident companies failing to meet the condition to appear as “exporter” at box 2 of the SAD may consider using the services of a third party (i.e. qualified service provider) that meets the requisite of being EU Customs established and which may appear as exporter of the record on their behalf. 

It must be mentioned that those non-EU resident companies having obtained an EORI in Spain with a Spanish tax representative, the same would appear ex-officio with their Spanish tax domicile at the official address of this representative. For this case, it is contemplated that the company allows its data at the Spanish census to be shared for EORI database purposes which, if accepted, would result in the company appearing at such a database as established in said Spanish fiscal domicile.