The concept and legal characteristics of customs procedures

The article is devoted to identifying theoretical and practical problems of defining the concept and implementing the structural and substantive characteristics of customs procedures within the framework of legal support. The relevance of the choice of topic is due to the lack of a unified approach to defining customs procedures in national customs legislation and the scientific doctrine of customs law, which negatively affects the unity of law enforcement practice. The presence of such problems may serve as a prerequisite for the abuse of discretionary powers of customs officials, as well as one of the factors increasing the level of corruption risks. The purpose of the article is to form a theoretical and legal approach to defining the concept of customs procedures, clarifying their legal nature, as well as revealing the content and structure of customs procedures in the system of customs law of Ukraine. The methodological basis of the research is made up of general scientific and special legal methods of cognition, in particular the dialectical method, formal legal analysis, system-structural method, comparative legal and logical-semantic methods, which allowed us to comprehensively investigate the legal nature of customs procedures and establish their structural elements. Criteria for distinguishing between the definitions of «legal procedure» and «legal procedure» have been determined, and also reveals the main features of the legal procedure, which include: regulation by national and international legislation; participation in such procedures of a subject of public authority; implementation of the procedure in the form of a set of sequential actions; aiming at achieving a specific legal result. The definitions of the concepts of «customs procedure», «customs rules», «customs regime», «customs formalities» and «customs clearance» provided for by the Customs Code of Ukraine and covered in scientific sources are given. As a result of the study, a justification of the author’s approach to defining a customs procedure as a law enforcement activity of customs authorities aimed at implementing the requirements of customs legislation within the framework of the selected customs regime and the purpose of moving goods across the customs border of Ukraine was proposed. The main structural elements of customs procedures are identified, in particular customs control, customs clearance and collection (collection) of customs payments, and their content is also determined. The term «customs payments» is defined, their types are defined, and it is also noted that the activity of collecting customs payments is one of the components of customs affairs, which is provided for by Article 7 of the Customs Code of Ukraine. It was found that relations related to the payment of customs payments are regulated by the Customs Code of Ukraine, the Tax Code of Ukraine and other laws of Ukraine on taxation. The need for further improvement of theoretical foundations and regulatory consolidation of customs procedures was emphasized in order to ensure legal certainty and increase the efficiency of customs authorities.