YMCA has been involved in a case where the client’s yacht had been controlled for wrongly using excise-duty free fuel.

According to the French regulations, a yacht can use excise-duty  free fuel only using a transport/cruise contract and being registered under a commercial certificate of registry.

In our case, the yacht properly had a cruise contract in place every time he used excise-duty free fuel. The issue lied with the commercial certificate of registry. Our client’s registration was a little special as it bore the following mention “pleasure yacht used commercially” which means that even though the yacht was used for commercial activities, she did not comply with the commercial requirements of her flag.

As a consequence, the customs challenged the exemption and reassessed the excise duty. Our client had no choice but to pay this duty. However, we helped him compromise with the customs in order to reduce the penalties, which could have amounted to two times the value of the fuel (excluding taxes), as well as the late payment interests.

Thanks to our experience and tenacity we negotiated a 95% reduction in penalties and a complete remission of the late payment interests.

Do not hesitate to contact us if you experience the same kind of issue.

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