What problems will arise in the cross-border e-commerce industry under the current regulatory logic?
Theoretically, the “three orders” are extremely perfect, but in actual operation, there will be problems with unclear responsible parties. We know that the current pilot import cross-border e-commerce is a retail model, including bonded import (BBC) and overseas direct mail (BC). Under the retail model, the declaring subject must be an individual. To be precise, this declaring subject should be the orderer, not the payer or the recipient. The reasons are as follows: ① The orderer is the buyer in the sales contract, and it has a sales contract relationship with the platform merchant; ② The payer is only the payee, who can be the actual buyer or not (for example, the orderer entrusts others to pay); ③ The recipient is only the person who receives the goods, who can be the actual buyer or not (for example, the orderer gives it to the recipient as a gift after purchase).
However, this declaring subject is not within the scope of customs supervision. At least, the customs does not directly supervise the individual declaring subject. In actual operation, the e-commerce platform pushes the customs declaration data (order) to the customs clearance service platform on behalf of the individual. As a result, the e-commerce platform has become the object of customs supervision, while the actual declaring subject is the individual. Then, the question is, once the customs declaration data is inconsistent with the actual goods, who will bear the responsibility for customs declaration? (For example: during the physical inspection, the customs found that the goods in a certain order were inconsistent with the declared goods, and there was suspicion of smuggling. Who should be held responsible?)
First, although the e-commerce platform enterprise is the object of customs supervision, it is essentially just declaring on behalf of the orderer, not the actual declaring entity, so it should not be the responsible person. Secondly, although the orderer is the actual declaring entity, this declaring entity is just a consumer who purchased the goods on the e-commerce platform and paid the corresponding taxes and fees. As for declaration, individuals entrust e-commerce enterprises to declare on their behalf. If there is a problem of data discrepancy, they should go directly to the e-commerce enterprise. Finally, the sellers on the e-commerce platform are usually overseas, and the payment companies and logistics companies are only related service providers. They cannot be the responsible entity.
In this way, the customs cannot find the person responsible for customs declaration.
In addition, as the direct supervision object of the customs, the e-commerce platform enterprise itself has unreasonable problems.
First, the actual declarant is an individual (orderer), not an e-commerce platform company;
Second, an e-commerce platform company is only a third-party company that provides transaction matching services and does not participate in the sale itself;
Third, for those self-operated websites that are both platforms and sellers, they are usually overseas entities and difficult to be supervised.
Therefore, e-commerce platforms can serve as third parties to assist customs in supervising the buying and selling entities, but should not be the direct subject of supervision.