Duty And Customs

Both the public at large and tax practitioners were probably relieved when the subject of Customs' treatment of returning cross-border shoppers — particularly at Dover — went out of the limelight last year. Prior to the Lindsay decision followed after some months by the two decisions in Hoverspeed a situation built up which had probably never previously been paralleled in British social history. Reports of harassment of private citizens returning to this country from cross-border shopping expeditions by customs officers appeared almost daily in the press and citizens' complaints began to be heard with increasing frequency on the main news programmes of the broadcasting authorities. Eventually even the serious broadsheets began to...