PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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C.O. 885
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
may be practically said to be their cost price on landing, ..., their invoice values with the addition "of freight charges." In Tasmania imports liable to ad valorem duties are estimated at their value at
the port of shipment, with an addition of 12 per cent., while other goods are appraised at their value at the port of shipment without any addition. In Trinidad the "ad valorem" goods are reckoned at their value at the port of shipment, and other goods at their value at the port of entry.
Mauritius adopts a system peculiar to itself. The value at the port of shipment is takeu, and to it is added 33 per cent. in the case of animals, 125 per cent. in the case of coals, and 30 per cent. in the case of other goods.
In Gibraltar and Hong Kong no valuation is made. Such figures of the trade of these Colonies as appear in the Board of Trade publications are compiled from the Statistical Records of the countries which trade with those Possessions.
With reference to the practice in several Colonies, of adding a per-centage to the cost at the port of shipmect in order to arrive at the value at the port of entry, it may be observed that this device is of very old standing, and probably owes its existence in the Colonies to the Imperial Acts" to regulate the "trade of the British possessions abroad" passed in 1755 and 1833. By the 6th George IV. cap. 114, and again by the 3rd and 4th Will. IV. cap. 59, it is enacted that "in all cases where the duties imposed "by this Act upon the importation of articles into His Majesty's Possessions in America are charged, "not according to the weight, tale, gauge, or ""measure, but according to the value thereof, such "value shall be ascertained by the declaration of "the importer of such articles, or bis known agent,
" in manner and form following;
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which declaration shall be written
" on the bill of entry of such articles, and shall be
* subscribed with the hand of the importer thereof,
像
or
his known agent, in the presence of the collector
" or other principal officer of the Customs at the
" port of importation; provided that if upon view " and examination of such articles by the proper " officer of the Customs it shall appear to him that "the said articles are not valued according to the true price or value thereof, and according to the ** true intent and meaning of this Act, then and in "sach case the importer or his known agent shall be required to declare on oath before the collector or " controller what is the invoice price of such articles, " and that he verily believes such invoice price is "the current value of the articles at the place from * whence the said articles were imported; and such invoice price, with the addition of 10. per centum thereon, shall be deemed to be the value of the articles, in lieu of the value so declared by the importer or his known agent, and upon which the duties imposed by this Act shall be charged and “paid." The statistioal valuation of imports into St. Helena in still governed by this clause, which was incorporated into an Order in Council passed on the 11th July 1839, under powers given by the sbove-mentioned Act of William IV. for regulating the trade and commerce of the island.
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Taking the figures for 1889 supplied by the Colonial Governments to the editors of the Colonial Office List, and published in the statistical table accompanying the issue or 1891, the preceding analysis may be summed up as follows:-
61,000,000Z. of imports are valued by the import-
ing Colonies by system A.; 27,000,000Z. by system B.;
28,000,0007. by system C.;
1,600,0001. by a combination of A. and B.; 24,000,000%. by a combination of B. and C.; and 2,000,000l. by a combination of A. and C. Turning now to the means adopted for arriving at the value of consignments, we find that in the great majority of cases a declaration is required from the importer, supported by production of the invoice. In some instances the values are calculated by the Customs either from information supplied by the importer, or from current price lists, or from average prices. The production of invoices is rarely enforced unless the goods are liable to an ad valorem duty; and indeed the amount of accuracy with which these returns are made appears at present to depend almost entirely on the nature of the duty with which the goods are chargeable. In general terms it is not too much to say that while goods subject to an ad valorem duty are valued with considerable care and correctness, those liable to a specific duty are valued with but little care, and duty-free goods with no care at all. In the last two cases the importer's declara- tion is in the majority of cases allowed to pass practically unchallenged, under the supposition that as he has nothing to gain by a false declaration his statement may be accepted as correct. The ex- perience of the British Custom House, however, shows that this inference cannot safely be drawn; for it not infrequently happens that goods, although duty free, are found to be declared at values which are wildly above, or below, the truth. This arises not from a wish to deceive, but from sheer reckless- ness, and a desire to avoid trouble, on the part of the importer's clerk, on whom, in practice, the duty of preparing the declaration generally devolves, and it is an important source of error, which has to be remembered and guarded against.
It may be well to remark that the Colonial authori- ties themselves are not insensible to the deficiencies of their statistics as at present compiled. Thus in the replies to Lord Kimberley's circular it was stated by one of the Australian Colonies that the values were given in a perfunctory manner, without declaration or penalty; by another that the returns do not show the entire cost to the Colony of her imports; and by a third that scientific accuracy is not obtained, and that "if any uniform system for determining these " values for statistical purposes be recommended for general adoption it will give Ministers much "satisfaction to co-operate in the work by intro- "ducing such amendments into the local practice as
may make it conform to the adopted system."
"
In the case of exports there is a general agree Exporta.
ment as to the principle on which valuations should
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