What is the AFR fee?
AFR stands for Advance Filing Rules. This fee is understood as the electronic Manifest declaration fee for shipments of goods exported to Japan.
Japanese Customs will require all goods exported to Japan to declare and pay the AFR fee. The declaration should be made before the carrier departs for ports or airports in Japan. Carriers will be responsible for communicating AFR fees to exporters.
Japanese customs authorities will require declarations and pay the AFR fee at least 24 hours before the departure of the means of transport and the carrier will collect this fee from the exporter of the goods.
One thing you should note is that the Japanese customs department has announced the application of electronic manifest.
Object declared AFR
For the AFR fee, the declared objects will include:
Carrier: The unit that declares according to the details of Master B/L.
Forwarder company (NVOCC): Make declaration according to House B/L.
Penalties for declaring AFR and timelines you should remember
As for the AFR declaration, you should pay attention because the penalty for violations in the AFR declaration will be very heavy, up to 5000 USD or 1 year in prison.
Specifically, the most common errors are as follows:
Do not declare but still let the goods be shipped
Making false statements and not correcting or adjusting, tracking or completing records.
When declaring AFR, you need to note the following timelines:
From March 1, 2014 – AFR declaration has been applied, but penalties have not been applied for late or no declaration.
From 09/03/2014 – Penalties for false declarations, late declarations according to regulations will be applied
You should note that if the goods are exported to Japan, you should register for a manifest account early. The reason is because the time to register an account to declare Manifest takes 3-4 working days and weekends or holidays will not work. Manifest declaration must be made at least 24 hours before the vessel departs from the port of loading. From the time the train starts running, no adjustments will be accepted. Deadline for you to declare AFR is no later than 24 hours after the ship leaves the port of loading.
Information required to declare AFR
When declaring AFR, you need to have the following specific information:
Name, sender’s address, recipient’s name, third party notifier.
Name of specific goods, details and codes of such goods.
Description of goods. Generic descriptions will not be accepted.
Container number and seal number
In Appendix 3, the date information will be required, while in Appendix 9 it will not be required.
AFR toll rate
For non-AFR , the payers will be the exporters. The unit that collects this fee will be the shipping lines but will not charge like other service fees. Usually, the fee will include the fee to be paid along with the amount of money to declare on behalf of the average AFR fee ranges from 25 to 40 USD/shipment (25-40 USD/bill), the fee will vary Depends on different carriers.
Just like AFS or AMS fees.. AFR fees will only be collected per shipment, they are not charged by volume or quantity. Even if you export 1 or 100 containers at a time, the fee is still only 25-40 USD.