Customs Reviewed Your Import Declaration in the DR Years Later: How the Appeal Works

An importing company declares, pays its duties, and considers the matter closed. Months, or even two years, later, it receives a notice: the General Directorate of Customs (Dirección General de Aduanas, DGA) reviewed the file and found a discrepancy. The initial reaction is usually surprise. It should not be: the Dominican customs system is designed exactly that way.

In the Dominican Republic, the party who imports, the consignee, the customs broker, or the importer itself, self-assesses the amount of its obligations. It classifies the goods, sets the taxable base, calculates the tax, and pays it, reporting the result to the DGA. It is a system of initial trust, but not a definitive one.

The DGA retains, for two years counted from the definitive payment, the power to audit that self-assessment through risk analysis, and to correct it if it detects a difference between what was declared and what was verified. That two-year window is what surprises many importers: the file they believed closed can be reopened at any moment within that period.

Three instances before reaching a court

If the importer does not agree with the reassessment, the law gives it a three-step route: first, objections before the Customs Administrator itself; if the response does not satisfy it, an appeal before the Director General of Customs; and if the disagreement still persists, an appeal before the contentious-administrative court with jurisdiction over tax and customs matters.

This prior administrative route is not an optional formality: it is a requirement in order to later reach the judicial venue. The same logic of exhausting the administrative channel appears in other areas of Dominican tax law, for example, in disputes with the DGII, which in practice generates a recurring tension between different rules as to when a taxpayer may go straight to a court and when it must first file a claim before the administration itself.

If you carry out frequent imports, keep for at least two full years all the documentation supporting the tariff classification and the declared value: it is exactly the period during which the DGA may review the file, and the burden of proving that the self-assessment was correct falls, in practice, on the importer. We can represent you in objections, appeals, and challenges before the customs administration.

Do you want more information about our Customs Administrative Appeals services in the Dominican Republic? Contact Us.

Disclaimer: This publication is not intended to provide advice or suggest a guaranteed outcome as individual situations will differ and the situation may have changed since publication. For specific advice on the information provided and related topics, please contact the author.

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