Last updated: June 2026
Duty deferment account (DDA): A facility granted by HMRC that allows importers to delay payment of customs duty, excise duty, and import VAT, collecting everything owed into a single monthly Direct Debit taken on the 15th of the month following import, rather than paying at the point of customs clearance.
In plain terms: goods arrive, they clear customs, and you do not pay the duty that day. You pay it around six weeks later, once a month, in one go.
That might sound like a small administrative convenience. For a business bringing in regular shipments, it is anything but. Every day between clearance and payment is a day you still have that money working in your business.
Before you had a DDA, your freight forwarder or customs broker would pay duty on your behalf and invoice you for it, often with their own handling charge added. A duty deferment account puts that payment in your hands and on your timeline.
The mechanics are straightforward once you see the timeline laid out.
Step 1: Goods arrive and declarations are submitted.
Your customs agent submits import declarations through the Customs Declaration Service (CDS). Your deferment account number is quoted on each declaration.
Step 2: Duty is recorded, not collected.
HMRC records the duty against your account. No money leaves your bank at this point.
Step 3, Your Duty Deferment Statement is issued.
Each month, HMRC produces a statement showing everything deferred against your account in the previous period. You can view this through the Duty Deferment Electronic Statements (DDES) service.
Step 4: Payment is collected by Direct Debit.
On the 15th of the following month (or the next working day if the 15th falls on a weekend or bank holiday), HMRC collects the full amount by Direct Debit.
The result: goods imported throughout January are paid for on 15 February. That is up to six weeks of working capital sitting in your account, no invoice, no credit agreement, no interest.
Any business established in the UK that regularly imports goods into Great Britain can apply. There is no minimum import value or volume requirement.
In practice, a duty deferment account makes the most commercial sense if:
You do not need to be VAT-registered to hold a DDA, though most businesses that import regularly will be.
HMRC will check your compliance history as part of the application. A clean record, no unpaid debts, no serious customs irregularities, is the baseline requirement.
The application is made through HMRC’s online service. Here is the process step by step.
Step 1: Get your Government Gateway credentials in order.
You will need a Government Gateway user ID and password linked to your business. If you do not have one, create it at gov.uk before starting.
Step 2: Access the Customs Declaration Service.
Log in to your CDS account. If you are not yet enrolled in CDS, you will need to do that first. CDS replaced CHIEF as the UK’s customs platform and is now the only system in use.
Step 3: Apply for a duty deferment account.
Within CDS, navigate to the duty deferment application. You will provide your EORI number, business details, and bank account information for the Direct Debit.
Step 4: Arrange a Customs Comprehensive Guarantee (or apply for a waiver).
Most applicants need a guarantee in place before HMRC will approve the account. See the next section for how this works. If you believe you qualify for a waiver, you can apply for one at the same time.
Step 5: Receive your deferment account number.
Once approved, HMRC issues your DDA number. This seven-digit reference goes on every import declaration where you want to use deferment.
Step 6: Set up access to DDES.
Register for the Duty Deferment Electronic Statements service so you can view your monthly statements and track your deferred balance in real time.
Processing times vary, but most applications are decided within a few weeks. If you need a guarantee from a bank or insurer, factor in time for that arrangement too.
A duty deferment account covers most charges that arise on import into Great Britain. These include:
The deferment account does not cover:
If you are unsure whether a specific charge can be deferred, your customs broker or HMRC’s CDS helpline can confirm.
To protect against the risk that a business defers duty and then fails to pay, HMRC requires most DDA holders to hold a Customs Comprehensive Guarantee (CCG).
A CCG is a financial guarantee, usually provided by a bank, insurance company, or specialist guarantor, that covers the maximum amount of duty you might defer in any one month. HMRC sets the guarantee level based on your expected monthly duty liability.
How the guarantee level is calculated:
HMRC looks at your anticipated monthly duty liability and sets the CCG at a level that covers it. If your expected duty is £20,000 per month, your guarantee needs to cover at least £20,000.
What a guarantee costs:
Guarantee providers typically charge an annual fee, often expressed as a percentage of the guarantee value. A guarantee for £20,000 might cost between £200 and £600 per year depending on the provider and your business profile.
Who provides guarantees:
Banks, some insurance companies, and specialist trade finance firms. Your customs broker or freight forwarder can usually point you toward providers they work with.
The guarantee does not come from HMRC, you arrange it independently and then provide HMRC with the guarantee reference during your DDA application.
Here is something that many new importers do not know: HMRC can waive the guarantee requirement entirely for businesses with a strong compliance record.
The guarantee waiver means you can hold and use a duty deferment account without arranging a CCG at all. No annual guarantee fee, no third-party arrangement, just the deferment facility on its own.
Who qualifies for a guarantee waiver?
HMRC looks at your compliance history. The key factors are:
New businesses with no import history will not qualify immediately. The waiver is designed for established importers who have showed they are low-risk.
How to apply:
You apply for the waiver as part of your DDA application. If approved, HMRC will grant your account without a guarantee condition. If your circumstances change, or if you miss a Direct Debit. HMRC can review and withdraw the waiver.
If you are an established importer with a clean record, it is worth applying for the waiver first. The worst HMRC can say is no, and you then proceed to arrange a CCG.
The Simplified Customs Declaration Procedure (SCDP) allows goods to clear customs faster. You submit a reduced declaration at the frontier, then a full supplementary declaration later.
SCDP and duty deferment are designed to work together. In fact, a duty deferment account is a requirement for using SCDP. Without one, you cannot be authorised for the simplified procedure.
The reason is structural. Under SCDP, duty is not calculated and collected at the moment of clearance. It is assessed across the period covered by your supplementary declarations and then collected via your deferment account. There is no other mechanism for that collection to work.
If your business is applying for SCDP authorisation and does not yet have a DDA, sorting the deferment account first is the logical starting point. The two applications can often run in parallel, but the DDA needs to be in place before SCDP can go live.
This is where a lot of people get confused, and it is worth being clear.
Import VAT can be handled in two ways.
Option 1: Via the duty deferment account.
Import VAT is collected alongside customs duty, deferred to the monthly payment cycle. The VAT liability appears on your duty deferment statement and is collected by Direct Debit on the 15th.
Option 2: Via Postponed VAT Accounting (PVA).
PVA is a separate HMRC scheme that allows VAT-registered businesses to account for import VAT on their VAT return, rather than paying it through a deferment account. The VAT is a bookkeeping entry, declared and reclaimed in the same return, which means it has no cash flow impact at all.
For most VAT-registered importers, PVA is more efficient than deferring import VAT through a DDA. With PVA, import VAT is declared and reclaimed simultaneously, so it never actually leaves the business. Deferring it through a DDA still requires cash to leave the account on the 15th, even if it is reclaimed later.
The two schemes can run alongside each other. You use your DDA for customs duty (and excise duty if applicable), and you account for import VAT via PVA on your VAT return. When submitting your import declaration in CDS, selecting PVA as your VAT method removes import VAT from your deferment account liability entirely.
Your monthly import VAT statement (the Postponed Import VAT Statement) is available through your HMRC online account, separate from the Duty Deferment Statement.
HMRC issues your Duty Deferment Statement monthly. It shows every deferred transaction during the previous period, the date, declaration reference, goods description, and duty amount for each entry.
To access your statement:
Your statement is available from the fourth working day of each month for the previous period. HMRC recommends checking it before the 15th to flag any discrepancies, contacting HMRC after the Direct Debit has been collected makes resolution slower.
What to check:
If something looks wrong, contact HMRC’s CDS helpline promptly. Minor errors can sometimes be corrected before the Direct Debit is taken; larger discrepancies may require a formal amendment or repayment request.
Most DDA problems are avoidable. These are the ones that come up most often.
Not checking the monthly statement.
The statement goes out, the Direct Debit goes out, and the business assumes everything is fine. Errors from your customs broker, wrong duty rate, wrong commodity code, will appear on your statement. If you do not check it, you will not catch them before paying.
Not reviewing your deferment limit when volumes increase.
Your guarantee (if you have one) has a limit. If your imports scale up and your monthly duty liability regularly exceeds the guaranteed amount, HMRC may suspend your account mid-month. Review your limit annually, or whenever your import volumes change majorly.
Missing a Direct Debit.
A failed Direct Debit is a serious compliance event. HMRC can suspend your DDA immediately, which means duty becomes payable at the point of clearance until the account is reinstated. Keep enough funds in the linked bank account and make sure your bank details in CDS stay current.
Using the wrong account number on declarations.
If your DDA number is quoted incorrectly, duty will not be deferred against your account, it may default to another party’s account or be flagged as an error. Always verify the number with your customs broker when setting up the arrangement.
Confusing your DDA with your broker’s DDA.
Your freight forwarder probably has their own DDA that they use to clear goods on your behalf. When they do this, you are not using your DDA, you are borrowing theirs, and you will be invoiced for it. Having your own DDA removes this dependency and cuts the broker’s handling charge.
Before 1 January 2021, UK businesses importing from EU countries paid no customs duty on those goods. There was no tariff, no customs declaration, and so no need for a duty deferment account to handle EU trade.
Brexit changed that. Goods moving between the EU and Great Britain are now subject to customs procedures. Businesses that had previously only bought from European suppliers found themselves with duty bills they had never anticipated, and no infrastructure to manage them efficiently.
The impact was felt in two areas in particular.
Businesses with no existing DDA.
Companies that imported only from the EU had never needed a DDA. Post-Brexit, they needed one urgently, and many were caught paying duty at the point of clearance through their broker’s account while their own application was processed.
The end of transitional easements.
In the months immediately after Brexit, HMRC allowed flexibility in how declarations were submitted. Those easements have since ended. Businesses are now operating under full customs controls, and a DDA is the standard tool for managing duty payments efficiently.
The move from CHIEF to CDS.
The Customs Declaration Service (CDS) is now the only platform for submitting customs declarations in Great Britain. All DDA management, applying, checking statements, updating bank details, is done through CDS and the HMRC online account system.
Here is a concrete illustration of what a duty deferment account is worth in cash flow terms.
The business:
A UK importer of consumer electronics. They bring in twelve shipments per month from manufacturers in South Korea and Taiwan.
The duty position:
Average customs duty rate of 3.7% on goods with a combined CIF value of £490,000 per month. Monthly duty liability: around £18,100.
Without a duty deferment account:
Each shipment is cleared using the customs broker’s DDA. The broker invoices the importer for duty plus a handling fee, typically 1–2% of the duty value. That is around £180–£360 per month in broker charges on top of the duty itself. Duty is effectively paid within days of each clearance.
With their own duty deferment account:
The importer quotes their own DDA number on every declaration. Duty is deferred across the month. The Direct Debit for January’s imports is collected on 15 February.
The cash flow benefit:
At any point in the month, the business has up to £18,100 in deferred duty that has not yet left their bank account. Averaged across the year, the ongoing float is worth roughly £9,000–£12,000 in working capital. On a modest 4% cost of capital, that represents £360–£480 per year, plus the elimination of broker handling fees.
The guarantee:
The business applied for a guarantee waiver based on five years of clean import history. HMRC granted it. The annual cost of the DDA is zero beyond the time spent setting it up.
Total annual benefit: around £2,500–£4,000 in broker charge savings and working capital improvement, for a one-time application that took three weeks to process.
Where do I find my duty deferment account number?
Your DDA number is issued by HMRC when your application is approved. It appears in your HMRC online account and on your approval letter. It is a seven-character reference, typically one letter followed by six digits. Keep it accessible for your customs broker, as it needs to go on every declaration where you want deferment to apply.
How long does it take to get a duty deferment account?
HMRC does not publish a fixed processing time. Most straightforward applications are decided within two to four weeks. If your application requires HMRC to review financial information or if you are applying for a guarantee waiver, allow additional time. Applications that need a Customs Comprehensive Guarantee from a third party also depend on how quickly that guarantee can be arranged.
Is a duty deferment account the same as a Direct Debit?
No, but the two are linked. The DDA is the HMRC-approved facility that allows duty to be deferred. The Direct Debit is the payment mechanism HMRC uses to collect what you owe at the end of each monthly cycle. You must set up a Direct Debit as part of the DDA application, and the account must remain active for your DDA to function.
Can an agent or customs broker use my duty deferment account?
Yes. You can authorise your customs broker or freight forwarder to use your DDA on your behalf. This is done within the CDS system. Your broker quotes your DDA number on declarations they submit for you. You remain responsible for the duty liability, the Direct Debit comes from your bank account regardless of who submitted the declaration.
What happens if I miss a Direct Debit payment?
HMRC can suspend your duty deferment account immediately. While suspended, duty on new imports must be paid at the point of clearance, which can cause major delays and added costs. To reinstate the account, you will need to clear the outstanding amount and satisfy HMRC that future payments are secure. Avoiding missed payments is the single most important thing you can do to protect your DDA.
Do I need a duty deferment account if I only import occasionally?
Probably not. If you import goods infrequently, a few times a year, the administrative overhead of maintaining a DDA may outweigh the cash flow benefit. Most occasional importers clear duty through their broker’s account. If your import frequency increases, revisiting whether a DDA makes sense is a reasonable next step.
Can I use a duty deferment account for exports?
No. Duty deferment accounts apply to import duties, charges that arise when goods enter Great Britain. Export duties (which are rare in the UK context) and other export-related charges are not covered by a DDA.
What is the difference between a duty deferment account and postponed VAT accounting?
A duty deferment account defers customs duty (and optionally import VAT) to a monthly payment cycle. Postponed VAT Accounting (PVA) is a separate scheme that allows VAT-registered importers to declare and reclaim import VAT on the same VAT return, with no actual cash payment required. Most VAT-registered businesses use PVA for import VAT and their DDA for customs duty, the two schemes are designed to complement each other.
For full guidance on applying for a duty deferment account, see HMRC’s official guidance on duty deferment electronic statements.
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