Tokyo Customs

We went to Tokyo Customs at May 14^th. It is a nice experience because I have never visit the Customs in China and United States. When people mentioned Customs, the first thing appeared in my mind is people who work in international airport ask passengers to declare what they bring from other countries, and in some cases they can ask passengers to pay taxes for their goods. However, the speaker told us they have three main missions.

First of all, they need to ensure the safety and security of the society. They’ve been developing network for both internal and external to make sure there’s no illegal drugs, firearms, terrorism-related items and goods are delivered in the country. During the visit, the speaker showed us the X-ray machine they used in their daily work. The machine was put in a big room, workers brought samples in and detected whether the product met the standards or not. The other important way for them is drug detector dogs. Japanese used to import the excellent as well as qualified drug detector dogs from U.S. at very beginning, but now they have been trained the baby dogs by themselves. And all the special workers perform very well. Secondly, they need to collect consumption tax for imports fairly. Japanese 10% of national tax revenue is come from Customs daily work, which is 5 trillion Yan. Usually, there are 2 types of major sources in Custom’s duty; international mails and passengers’ baggage. To reach the more fairly charge of tax, they also have been developing and improving the tax systems. Thirdly, They need promoting trade facilitation. Japanese government set up an Authorized Economic Operator Center at Tokyo Customs. It is a program focus on the security and facilitation of international trade through partnership between private sectors and Customs. Also, they use Nippon Automated Cargo and Port Consolidated System to process most of the import as well as export declarations. It is very effective so that save the both human resources and reduce the consumptions.