Only 3 out of every 200 cars returning from Spain during the financial year 2018-2019 paid import duty on declarations made.
The findings were included in the Principal Auditor’s report, who said even taking into account frontier crossings for leisure or work purposes, the figure was “very low”.
However, in response, Customs said most people return to Gibraltar with items such as food shopping which incurs negligible duty.
An audit exercise to establish how much import duty was collected at the land frontier was based on the belief that most people are dishonest and fail to declare goods.
Between April 2018 and March 2019, 488,156 locally-registered vehicles entered Gibraltar across the land frontier.
The total number of declarations was 7,576 representing one declaration for every 64 cars, or 3 for every 200.
In other words, just 1.55% of vehicles crossing the frontier into Gibraltar during that period made a customs declaration.
The total revenue raised through import duty for the whole year was just over £200,000 from nearly half a million cars.
The Principal Auditor brought these figures to the attention of the Collector of Customs in December 2019, saying even allowing for people commuting to work and those solely travelling for leisure, the statistics indicated a very low number of declarations.
However, replying on behalf of the Collector, the Senior Customs Officer (Enforcement) explained the “vast number of Gibraltarians” do their weekly shop in Spain, returning with little or no items which attract import duty.
The Officer said after years of searching vehicles with ‘food shops’ the conclusion is the vast majority of people are honest and might bring in three or four low value items that attract duty, usually less than a pound.
Added to this, high-value ‘high street’ goods like smartphones and tablets, furniture and white goods were zero-rated for import duty when the audit was carried out.
When customs conducted a similar exercise between December 2019 and March 2020, 6,092 vehicles were stopped and searched on entry into Gibraltar, the equivalent of 5% of the total.
This resulted in just 17 penalties being issued for non-declaration of dutiable goods.
The Senior Customs Officer concludes their staff must either be very bad at detecting evasion or people are genuinely more honest than they’re given credit for.