Merchanting
Merchanting (or transit trade ) is foreign trade when residents import goods from foreigners in order to export them to other foreigners .
General
Merchanting thus fulfills the function of export , import and trade . It is therefore not another basic form of foreign trade, but rather a special form of carrying out export and import activities. There is a special form because imports and exports also occur in merchanting, so that actually no transactions independent of exports and imports can be determined. The transit trade is a triangular business in which the transit trader ( transit agent ) consequently carries out export and import transactions between two different countries outside their own economic area.
Legal issues
After the legal definition of § 2 para. 17, AWG is "each of merchanting business , acquire delivered at the national foreign goods located or in the inland, however, to import clearance yet bonded goods by foreigners and sell them to foreigners." Nationals ( § 2 Abs 15 AWG) were called residents until August 2013 (Section 4 (1) No. 5 AWG old version), foreigners ( Section 2 paragraph 5 AWG) according to non-residents (Section 4 paragraph 1 No. 7 AWG old version). ). These are natural or legal persons or commercial partnerships with residence or place of business in Germany (residents) or abroad (foreigners). Goods are goods , software , technology ( Section 2 (13) AWG) and electricity (Section 2 (22) AWG). Merchanting in Germany is only subject to a reporting requirement according to Section 68 AWV .
The Reichsgericht (RG) had already stated in its decision of December 1899 that a trader who imports goods for the purpose of export brings the goods on the domestic market because he is "not just a freight forwarder " for the client or manufacturer , but act as a buyer and importer. Accordingly, in the decision of April 3, 1884, the RG also assumed that goods would be held for sale and placed on the domestic market if goods manufactured abroad were sold and shipped abroad.
However , according to a judgment of the Hamburg Higher Regional Court of February 1955, the word “traffic” should not be understood here in terms of transport. Its importance must be limited to trade . Through pure transit traffic by rail, motor vehicle or ship through Germany, in which carriers or freight forwarders in Germany , without concluding any commercial transactions about the goods as such, only cooperate in terms of transport with the execution of a through freight contract or through any ancillary business for the purpose, that the goods leave the home country again on the way abroad is not trade. In October 2005 , the ECJ ruled in another case that the placing on the market of goods from third countries in the Community requires their release for free circulation within the meaning of Art. 29 TFEU . Accordingly, goods in transit do not enter the domestic market.
species
A distinction is made between broken / unbroken and active / passive merchanting.
Uninterrupted merchanting
The unbroken transit trade ( Drop Ship ) is the classic transit trade. He assumes
- that the goods are delivered directly from the exporter to the importer ,
- that the exporter in country A delivers directly to the importer in country C,
- that no transhipment takes place in Germany and
- that there is no change in the form of machining or processing of the goods.
Broken merchanting (warehouse business)
- The exporter in country A transports the goods to the dealer in country B, who transports it to the importer in country C. Advantage for the dealer: He can relabel it and the importer will not find out anything about this from the exporter.
- The transit goods are temporarily stored (handled) in a free port in the country in which the transit trader is based. This transit business is known as "statistical transit" because it is statistically recorded in the country of the merchant.
- The merchant takes the goods in a free port or in his private bonded warehouse for storage and processes (cleans, sorts, assembles or mixes) them there. He then exports the processed goods directly from there to other countries (“ re-export ”). If a transit takes place through a country under customs seal, one speaks of "export transit".
Active transit
- The dealer is located in Germany,
- Importer & exporter are located abroad.
Goods that are outside the economic area are sold to non-residents by resident transit traders.
Passive transit
- The dealer is located abroad,
- The importer or exporter are located in Germany.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Kutschker / Stefan Schmid, Internationales Management , 2011, p. 30
- ↑ Clemens Büter, Foreign Trade: Basics of International Trade Relations , 2017, p. 85
- ^ RG, judgment of December 2, 1899, RGZ 45, 149
- ↑ RGSt 10, 349, 350 f.
- ↑ Hamburg Higher Regional Court, judgment of February 9, 1955, Az .: U 14/54 = I ZR 56/55
- ↑ ECJ, judgment of October 18, 2005, Az .: C-405/03
