It is no secret that customs authorities are widely replacing desk audits with customs control after the release of goods, in the form of document and information checks so that instead of making a single decision following a customs inspection, they instead issue numerous separate decisions – for each individual customs declaration. As a result, in the event of a court appeal, the state fee paid by the declarant increases hundreds of times. Furthermore, if the customs authority loses the dispute, the court collects the state fee from it in a single amount, as if a single decision had been appealed.
As a result of such increased cost of access for declarants to the right of appeal, the number of legal disputes with customs authorities in 2025 decreased by 21% compared to 2024. This situation undoubtedly suited the customs authorities and continued to develop with the tacit support of the Ministry of Finance, which refused to intervene.
The court case in question is significant in that for the first time the court has concluded that it is possible to calculate the state fee based on a single claim – despite a significant number of individual customs authority decisions formally being challenged – if such decisions are based on a single inspection report and a single subject matter of dispute.
Background
PepsiCo Holdings LLC filed a lawsuit to invalidate customs authority decisions to amend information declared in goods declarations. The relevant decisions were made following a desk audit and concerned the inclusion of licence fees in the customs value.In total, the customs authority issued 539 decisions regarding individual goods declarations, all based on a single inspection report and within the framework of a single control (supervisory) activity.
When filing a lawsuit, the applicant relied on the traditional approach and paid a state fee of RUB26,9 mln, at a rate of RUB50,000 for each non-regulatory act.
Court position
Considering the issue of allocating legal costs and the amount of the state fee to be collected, the court noted that in this case, the appealed decisions were in fact derived from a single inspection report and related to a single subject matter of dispute.In view of the foregoing, the court concluded that the state fee should be calculated as a single claim, despite the formal existence of multiple separate customs authority decisions.
Therefore, the court actually departed from the recently established approach, which considers each decision as an independent subject matter of the appeal for the purposes of calculating the state fee.
This approach could mark a turning point in the established judicial practice. Previously, courts held that when challenging multiple non-regulatory acts, state fees must be paid for each independent claimSee, for example, the Resolution of the Arbitrazh Court of the Northwestern District dated 14 October 2025 in case
Significance of the case
The decision in question is of interest in terms of a possible revision of the approach to determining the number of claims in customs disputes.Importantly, the court actually allowed the assessment of the totality of customs authority decisions as a single dispute, given the common ground (a single inspection and a single subject matter of disagreement), which we believe is fair.
However, given the level of the legal act (first instance) and the existence of established practice to the contrary, it is premature to speak of a new approach being formed at this time.
Nevertheless, applicants can use the relevant arguments when structuring their claims and justifying their position on reducing the state fee, especially in cases involving large-scale adjustments to customs value.
In practical terms, at this stage, it is advisable to adopt a conservative approach (paying the state fee for each claim), considering the court’s position in case No. A53-16734/25 more as an additional argument in support of the position than as a reflection of established practice, and to be prepared for the possibility that the court may disagree with such calculation of the fee and leave the case pending until additional payment, being guided by the prevailing practice.
