None of these are our clients. All of them are published decisions you can read at the links. We list them because the traps we describe are not marketing. They have case numbers.
What happened. A Lithuanian company imported silicon bought as Taiwanese. It held origin certificates and insurance documents naming Taiwan, asked the supplier to confirm origin before shipment, and asked customs about the certificates. An OLAF investigation later traced the goods to China. The operations done in Taiwan did not count as origin conferring processing.
The bill. Customs recalculated: 410,819 Lt anti dumping duty at the 49% rate for Chinese silicon, 86,271 Lt import VAT, 25,707 Lt interest and a 99,418 Lt fine. Just over 180,000 EUR in today's money.
What the court said. To charge the duty, customs only has to establish the true origin of the goods. It does not have to prove the importer acted in bad faith.
What we take from it. An origin certificate is a claim, not a shield. For goods from countries next to anti dumping targets, the file needs production evidence. This is exactly why preference documents like EUR.1 get verified before a declaration is posted, not after a letter arrives.
What happened. A declarant filed an import from China using the commodity code supplied by the Chinese seller and the buyer. Customs took laboratory samples and split the goods into two codes. One of them carried a 39.2% anti dumping duty.
The bill. The recalculated duty plus the administrative fine for wrong declaration data, whose statutory bracket at the time was 1,448 to 2,896 EUR, with or without confiscation of the goods.
What we take from it. Whoever signs the declaration owns the code. Classification for new products gets checked against the tariff and, where money rides on it, secured with a binding tariff information ruling in advance.
What happened. A recurring Lithuanian dispute: the seller applied 0% VAT on sales to EU buyers, the tax administrator argued the goods were never really shipped out, and the case turned on transport evidence. The stream of cases runs through the Supreme Administrative Court, for example eA-159-602/2017, A-1477-438/2017, eA-95-968/2019, and two Lithuanian references reached the EU Court of Justice: C-108/17 Enteco Baltic and C-386/16 Toridas.
The rule since 2020. EU Regulation 282/2011, article 45a: to presume the goods left, the seller wants the buyer's confirmation plus at least two pieces of evidence issued by parties independent of both sides. A signed CMR, a carrier invoice, a warehouse receipt in the destination country.
What we take from it. The 0% rate is not applied, it is proven. Our monthly close checks that every zero rated sale has its evidence pair before the EU sales list goes out.
What happened. Goods were imported under procedure 42, released without cash import VAT because they were declared for onward supply to VAT payers in other member states. Customs later took the position that the onward movement was not properly evidenced, changed the procedure code from 42 to 40, and assessed the full import VAT with interest.
How it went. Before the Tax Disputes Commission the importer relied on the good faith line of the courts, LVAT 2017-02-02 in case A-1477-438/2017: if the supplier was honest and diligent, took all reasonable steps, and the goods really moved, additional VAT should not stick. The commission's decision was partly in the taxpayer's favour. The point is what the fight was about: documents.
What we take from it. Procedure 42 saves real cash flow and draws real scrutiny. It is only as strong as the delivery evidence behind each consignment, collected at the time, not reconstructed a year later.