Field notes
Postponed import VAT and the chart that should not exist
Postponed import VAT is accounted for on the VAT return. Duty is not. Combining them into a single “border cost” slice makes a colourful picture and a confused finance meeting. We have been asked for that slice more than once. We do not draw it.
What we will draw is a pair: duty paid (or deferred) as it appears on the declarations, and postponed import VAT as a separate total for the same period, with a sentence on whether the extract actually contains the VAT figure or whether it must be taken from another report. If the extract is silent, the pack is silent rather than helpful.
Board packs sometimes want one number for “what we paid at the border”. That number is a management construct. It can live in your own pack, with your own definition. It does not belong in a customs reporting pack that a later reader might treat as a reconstruction of the entries.
If your postponed accounting is new, or you moved from payment at import, say so in the intake. The first month after a change is where mixed methods produce totals that nobody will own six months later.