Customs formalities

Law 7/2022, of 8 April, on waste and contaminated soils for a circular economy has established, in Chapter I of its Title VII, the special tax on non-reusable plastic packaging, including importation as a taxable event whose entry into force took place on 1 January 2023.

For this reason, the relevant changes have been made to the import system to enable the management of this tax, as follows:

• The taxable event is the release for free circulation and therefore the following provisions apply to declarations submitted for any of the following schemes:40, 42, 61, 63, 44, 49 and 07.
• The tax rate is 0.45 euros per kg net declared in box 47.
• At box 47 (settlement) shall be entered:
  • Type of tribute:1PL
  • The taxable amount shall be kg net of non-recycled plastic (to two decimal places) contained in:
    • Non-reusable packaging (if the packaging is reusable or, if it is not, all plastic is recycled, nothing shall be declared in this box) (Art. 68.1.a).
    • Semi-finished plastic products intended for the production of the packaging referred to in the previous paragraph, such as thermoplastic preforms or sheets (Art. 68.1.b).
    • Products containing plastics intended to enable the closure, marketing or presentation of non-reusable packaging (Art. 68.1.c).
• The kilograms of plastic corresponding to shall not be declared the cases of non-taxation of Article 73.
• The exemptions provided for in Article 75 should be declared using one of the following codes in box 37.2:
  • 1P1:code for the exemption provided for in Article 75(a).
  • 1P2:code for the exemption provided for in Article 75(b).
  • 1P3:code for the exemption provided for in Article 75(c).
  • 1P4:code for letter exemption provided for in Article 75(f).
  • 1P5:code for letter exemption provided for in Article 75(g).

Where any of the above exemption codes are declared, the kg of non-recycled plastic shall be declared in box 47.

Different exemption codes can be declared under the same heading.

• Special feature of the exemption for imports of up to 5 kg per month of non-reusable packaging provided for in Article 68(1)(a) (75 f).If more than 5 kg net are imported in the calendar month, the tax shall be assessed on the totality of the kg imported in that month (i.e. including the first 5 kg) as follows:
  • If in a single SAD all the items for which the exemption code 1P4 is declared exceed 5 kg, the SAD shall be rejected.
  • If the set of items with exemption code 1P4 is less than 5 kg, but there are previous SADs in the same month that, as a whole, exceed this limit, the importer must not declare the exemption code (so that the declared kg will be settled in the SAD) and must communicate this circumstance to the customs office.
• The kg net of recycled plastic contained in the products within the target scope of the tax should be declared in box 44 together with the recycled plastic certificate or the manufacturer's responsible declaration (only for 2023).The following codes shall be used for this purpose:
  • 1135 IPNR Recycled Plastic Certificate.
  • 1055 IPNR Manufacturer's Responsible Declaration

The information corresponding to these codes shall be declared with the following structure:

1135 Certificate reference (alphanumeric, minimum 2 characters), separator :and net weight in kg (to 2 decimal places)

1055 Declaration reference (alphanumeric, minimum 2 characters), separator :and net weight in kgs (to 2 decimal places)

- As does not require registration for importers there is no obligation to declare any code for this purpose.