The National Customs Service continues to make progress in the automation of its procedures, an aspect that is especially relevant in the context of the pandemic that Chile and the world are experiencing, but also related to key elements in the current management of the supervisory institution and its modernization.
Along with the adoption, since February, of a series of contingency measures to give continuity to foreign trade, taking care of the health of officials, their families and users, in addition to facilitating trade and ensuring the logistics chain, this time the Technical and IT sub-directorates, among other areas, worked to achieve Automation of the Customs Document Modification Request (SMDA), the first stage of which will come into effect on Monday, August 24.
On March 18 of this year, within the framework of the State of Emergency Declaration issued by the Government, Customs issued Resolution No. 1.179 with a series of 13 specific measures aimed at the use of technologies for carrying out foreign trade processes, among which, in section 8, was the possibility of submitting SMDAs and their supporting documents electronically.
This is a document widely used by operators in imports and exports, as it allows important adjustments to be made to the documents used to report the goods entering or leaving the country, for correct customs declaration and compliance.It should be noted that, depending on the type of modification requested, in order to safeguard fiscal interest and regulatory compliance, the request will have a review stage by an auditing officer, who will determine whether or not such change is appropriate.
"This is another example of the tireless work that our officials are doing, in different areas, to facilitate trade in this complex moment without putting anyone's health at risk. This also allows us to advance in our institutional objectives that aim to be a much more efficient Service through the intensive use of the technologies that we have available.", explained the National Director of Customs, José Ignacio Palma.
"Equally relevant is the possibility of contributing to the optimization of the time dedicated to administrative tasks by Customs officials to resolve this type of requests.", added the highest customs authority.
The acceptance of this measure was such that a thorough review of the SMDA procedure was necessary, particularly in those cases in which, due to the field in which the modification falls, its processing remained in manual format, both for imports and exports.
The digitalization of all SMDAs took into account the progress already made in the framework of the automation of the Refund of Customs Duties carried out in 2019, which involved significant reductions in deadlines and administrative tasks, benefiting taxpayers, the National Customs Service and the General Treasury of the Republic (TGR).
This new form of presentation, considering its magnitude, It will come into effect partially depending on the direction of the operation, that is, from next August 24, Customs agents will be able to electronically send the SMDAs that are currently manually processed for entry declarations, forms 15 and 17, processed in the SICOMEXIN system.
For the export process, this modality will depend on the status of the declaration: for Single Exit Documents (DUS) in the “Acceptance for Processing” status, its entry into force is scheduled for the month of September; while for the “Legalized” status, it is planned to come into force in the first quarter of 2021.
As a temporary measure while the health contingency continues, the background information supporting the modifications to operations made via SMDA must be sent electronically, as indicated in section 8 of Resolution No. 1.179.
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