Guarantee

Legislation requires a guarantee to be provided in most cases. This includes transit, inward processing and customs warehousing.

A guarantee can apply to a single event, but you can also provide a comprehensive guarantee for two or more events, declarations or procedures. To use a comprehensive guarantee, you must have an authorization.

Individual guarantee

An individual guarantee should be able to follow a customs declaration from start to finish and should refer to a single customs declaration, not several. An individual guarantee should be used if you submit a simplified application for inward processing, end-use or temporary import in the customs declaration. It can also be used to initiate a transit declaration under the normal procedure.

An individual guarantee should cover the customs duties and other charges for the single event. Reductions for individual guarantees are not available.

Swedish Customs accepts the following forms of guarantees. In the case of surety bonds, Swedish Customs only accepts guarantees that are worded in accordance with the guarantee annexes below and issued by a bank or credit company approved by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority:

Surety bond Pdf, 667.2 kB.
Deposit in a Swedish Customs bank account (cash deposit)
Pledge of blocked account Pdf, 125.4 kB..

Comprehensive guarantee

A comprehensive guarantee authorization covers customs duties and possibly other charges for two or more events or declarations. A comprehensive guarantee is sometimes a prerequisite for obtaining other authorizations that require a guarantee.

Where the comprehensive guarantee is valid in several countries, such as in transit, you must also provide a guarantee for national taxes and duties.

Based on a risk assessment, Swedish Customs may also in other cases require you to provide a comprehensive guarantee for taxes other than customs duties. An example of such a tax is VAT.

A comprehensive guarantee authorization covers one procedure, but you can have several comprehensive guarantee authorizations. As a company, you can choose to provide one guarantee document covering all the procedures in question or have one guarantee document per procedure.

Apply for a comprehensive guarantee authorization.

Reference amount

The amount of the comprehensive guarantee must correspond to a reference amount set by Swedish Customs. In your application for a comprehensive guarantee authorization, you must indicate a preliminary reference amount.

How to calculate the reference amount.

Reduction of the comprehensive guarantee

It is possible to obtain a reduction of the guarantee you provide if all relevant conditions and criteria are met. To obtain a reduction of the guarantee, you must apply for it when you apply for a comprehensive guarantee.

Read about the reduction you can get.

Keep track of the guarantee

If you have a comprehensive guarantee authorization, you are obliged to monitor that the current reference amount is not exceeded. You should inform the guarantee office if the reference amount is no longer sufficient by submitting a request for amendment via the Customs Decision System (CDS).

If Swedish Customs determines that the guarantee provided is not sufficient, we will require you to either provide an additional guarantee or replace the original guarantee with a new guarantee.

Upon release for free circulation, the charges in each import declaration are directly charged against the reference amount. If the reference amount is insufficient, the goods in the import declaration will be stopped.

In cases of transit, the charges in each transit are directly charged against the reference amount. If the reference amount is insufficient, no new transit operations can be started.

If you are unsure about your guarantee or reference amount, you can check it in the online service Guarantees.

Learn how to release goods that have been stopped due to insufficient guarantee.

Check the size of your guarantee and reference amount in the Guarantees e-service.

Learn how to request a change. (In Swedish)

When is the guarantee released?

Swedish Customs must release the guarantee immediately when the debt or obligation to pay other charges has ceased or can no longer be incurred. Where this concerns part of the amount covered by the guarantee, Swedish Customs shall release the corresponding part of the guarantee at your request, unless the amount involved is too small to justify such an action.