What is an ACP?

Attorney for Customs Procedures(ACP) is equivalent to IOR in the US.

When you export goods to Japan, you need an importer located in Japan.  In some cases, however, exporters do not have importers, which includes cases as below;

a.  The buyer requests the trade term DDP(Delivered Duty Paid) and the buyer refuses to be a importer, in which the buyer receives the goods after they have cleared the customs.

b.  The shipper sends their own property that they are not going to sell, such as exhibition displays or IT products set in Japan for their own global network (servers, routers, hubs, switches etc.).

c.  The goods will be sold after they are imported into Japan.

d.  Consignment sales such as FBA.

In such cases, there is no importer in Japan, so you have to conduct the customs procedures and be responsible for the goods as non-resident importers.

Whilst importers basically have to have an office or location in Japan, overseas companies and persons are granted the status to perform the above responsibilities by appointing an ACP and notifying to the customs office under Article 95 of the Customs Law, and Article 2 and Article 3 of the Law of Customs Brokerage.

The role expected of ACP is instructing the non-resident importer to declare at a fair price and properly pay the duties and taxes.

On the operation level, ACP works to assume the following tasks in order to perform the above role.

• Submit ACP applications to the customs office.
• Explain the rules and calculation of invoice prices for fair price declaration to ACP applicants.
• Answer questions from the customs office on behalf of the importer when the goods arrive in Japan.
• Keep the import documents for 7 years, and communicate with the customs officer in case of audits on the importer’s behalf, which involves answering customs’ questions regarding the declaration values and tariff codes, and proving the duties and taxes paid correctly.

Importing regulated items require certain procedures to assess safety and provide labeling for consumer safety. Non-resident importers are now allowed to import these items by combining these procedures and ACP appointment.

The procedures to clear regulated items cannot be done by overseas entities alone, thus ACPs who can handle these paperwork are required.
Here are the major laws that you may want to pay attention to due to the possibility of affecting your import procedures.