Court overturns $130,000 adjustment to iPhone batch value

Court hearing of case No. 380/998/26

The Lviv District Administrative Court issued a ruling in favour of the importer, fully granting the claim by LLC "Atlant OPT" against the Kyiv Customs. The judicial instance deemed the customs authority's administrative decisions unlawful and overturned them, specifically those regarding the adjustment of the goods' customs value and the corresponding refusal card.

Circumstances of the Apple smartphone import

The events that became the subject of the court hearing took place in December 2025. The enterprise imported a batch of used Apple smartphones (iPhone 13 and 14 series models). The total quantity of goods was 500 units, and their declared value was $130,922.

The importer provided customs officers with a full set of documentation confirming the legality of the transaction. This included a foreign economic contract, invoices, a bank payment document (SWIFT) certifying 100% prepayment, as well as transport and forwarding contracts.

Position of customs inspectors

The Kyiv Customs disagreed with the declared value, considering it understated. Inspectors formulated a number of objections to the documentation:

• In the opinion of customs officers, the contract lacked a detailed breakdown of price components, specifically air freight costs.
• Payment documents raised doubts due to the absence of a physical ("live") bank stamp on the SWIFT message.
• It was stated that additional documents were missing and there were discrepancies in logistics routes.

As a result of these remarks, the customs authority refused to clear the goods under the primary method of value determination. Instead, inspectors arbitrarily recalculated the value, using a residual method and relying on data from other customs declarations.

Court arguments in favour of the importer

The court ruling of 6 October 2026 confirmed the position of LLC "Atlant OPT", refuting the arguments of the controlling authority. The court noted the following:

• Regarding proof of payment: The electronic SWIFT receipt contains all necessary details in accordance with the standards of the National Bank of Ukraine. The presence of paper bank stamps is not mandatory.
• Regarding transport costs: The provided contracts, acts, and certificates sufficiently confirm the logistics scheme and the cost of carriage. Moreover, the CPT (Warsaw) delivery term means that the main transport costs to the specified point are already included by the seller in the price of the goods.
• Regarding the groundlessness of the adjustment: The customs authority failed to prove the existence of justified doubts about the authenticity of the submitted documents, and the requirements to provide additional papers were of a formal nature. The adjustment decision itself lacked a proper comparative analysis and calculations based on the referenced declarations; customs officers limited themselves to merely citing the numbers and dates of these documents.

Final decision and financial consequences

In addition to overturning the challenged decisions of the Kyiv Customs, the court ordered the customs authority to pay the enterprise a court fee of 8,455.79 UAH.