Who should be the importer of record on my shipment?
The party that is going to recover the import tax, and that is able to. Recovery follows legal responsibility for the import, so naming a convenient party, a forwarder, a customer, a group company with no registration, puts the claim in hands that cannot use it. Work backwards from the recovery: decide which entity will be registered in the destination country and will hold the entry documents, then make that entity the importer of record on the paperwork and in the contract. Doing it in that order costs a conversation. Doing it afterwards costs an amendment.
Can I recover import tax if my customer imported the goods?
Generally not. If your customer was the importer of record, the import was legally theirs and the recovery sits with them, whatever your invoice says and whoever actually paid the carrier. This is a common way a recovery is stranded: the cost lands in one party's accounts and the entitlement in another's. The fix is not a journal entry. It is either a claim by the party that holds the entitlement, passed back to you commercially, or a change to how future shipments are documented so that cost and entitlement line up.
My forwarder was named importer of record, is that a problem?
It can be. A forwarder named on the entry has taken legal responsibility for the import, which means the import tax is theirs to account for and, where recovery exists, theirs to claim. Sellers discover this when they look for a recovery and find no entry in their own name to support it. It also places obligations with a service provider you did not intend to give them, and leaves a record of your imports held outside your own file. Ask for the entry documents, read who is named, and settle who is meant to be there before the next consignment.
Does being importer of record mean registering for tax there?
Often it does, and that is the consequence people least expect. Import obligations are tested country by country on that country's own rules; nothing in an income tax treaty protects you from them, and a registration in one country does nothing for the next. So the question is not whether you have a presence in the ordinary sense, but whether importing in your own name creates an obligation under local law. Check it before the first shipment, separately for each country, and keep the answer with the entry documents.
What is the difference between importer of record and consignee?
The consignee is where the goods are going. The importer of record is who is answerable for the import. They are often the same party and just as often not, and the shipping documents will happily record two different names without anyone noticing. Only one of those roles carries the obligations and the recovery. When a recovery goes missing, the first thing to look at is whether the paperwork put your name in the delivery box and someone else's in the responsible one.
Can we change the importer of record after goods have cleared?
Not by agreeing it between yourselves. Once goods are cleared, the entry is a filed record of who imported them, and changing it means amending that record with the authority on the destination country's own terms, with evidence. Sometimes that route is open and sometimes the period for it has passed. So the practical approach is to fix the arrangement for future shipments first, since that part is within your control, and then look separately at whether anything already cleared can be corrected.
What is a permanent establishment, and how easily do we create one?
A taxable presence in another country under the treaty — typically a fixed place of business such as an office, branch, factory or workshop, or a dependent agent habitually concluding contracts on your behalf. Some treaties add a services test measured in days. Purely preparatory or auxiliary activity is excluded, but that carve-out is narrower than it sounds: one senior employee working from home in the other country, with authority, has been enough. See business profits and permanent establishment.
Is the sale of foreign property taxable where I live?
For a resident, yes — worldwide gains are taxable, and the gain is computed in your own currency, so the exchange rate at purchase and at sale changes the number even when the local-currency price did not move. The country where the property sits usually taxes it too, often with a withholding or clearance step before closing, and that tax becomes a credit. A principal residence relief may apply to a home abroad on the same terms as one at home. See principal residence and foreign property.
