Payment of duty - CBEC's Customs Manual 2025 - Customs

7. Payment of duty: 7.1 With effect from 17.09.2012, e-payment of Customs duty is mandatory for importers registered under Accredited Clients Programme/Authorised Economic Operator scheme and importers paying duty of Rs. 1 lakh or more per Bill of Entry. Since 17.08.2017, e-payment is mandatory for importers paying duty of Rs. 10,000 or more per Bill of Entry. 7.2 Customs Notification No. 134/2016-Customs (N.T) 135/2016-Customs (N.T.) dated 2nd November, 2016 allowed Importers certified under Authorized Economic Operator Programme as AEO (Tier-Two) and AEO (Tier-Three) to make deferred payment of duty of Customs. The Deferred Payment of Import Duty Rules were notified vide Notification no. 28/2017- Customs (N.T.) dated 31st March, 2017. Since 19.08.2020, Deferred Payment facility has been extended to Authorised Public Undertakings. [Refer Circulars No.33/2011-Cus., dated 29.7.2011 and No. 24/2012-Cus., dated 5.9.2012, No. 52/2016- Customs dated 15.11.2016, Notification No. 78/2020-Cus (NT) dated 19.08.2020 Circular No.37/2020 dated 19.08.2020] 7.3 The ICEGATE e-Payment Platform is enhanced to facilitate the electronic collection of Voluntary/Self-Initiated Payments (SIP). This innovative functionality is designed to replace the traditional TR-6 payments, which were previously processed manually at various Customs Stations. With this enhancement, users can generate self-initiated challans for voluntary payments and make payments via the ICEGATE e-payment platform without requiring further approval from Customs officers. The following details outline the key features: (i) All registered ICEGATE users will have access to this feature for payments related to past import/export transactions. It is important to note that this is not a replacement for challans generated by ICES, ECCS, SEZ online, or ACES applications. (ii) Voluntary payments can be made by debiting the Electronic Cash Ledger, a feature available exclusively to IEC holders and Customs Brokers. (iii) For users wishing to initiate challan-wise payments, the platform allows transaction-wise payments through the Electronic Cash Ledger before accounting for duty payment. (iv) Upon successful testing for the acceptance of voluntary payments, the following modes are currently enabled for challan-wise payments: I. Internet banking through nine authorized banks II. NEFT/RTGS via the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) III. Payment Aggregator mode [Refer Circular No. 27/2024- Customs dated 23.12.2024]