Study On The Internal Control Of Grass - Roots Customs Business From The Perspective Of COSO Theory

After years of efforts on construction of a clean and honest administration since the late of90s, many achievements have been made in building of mechanism on China Customs’ internal control by the way of increasing applications of information technology, as well as more and more transparent and standardized Customs operation. However, for the reasons of complicated environment of the law enforcement, the concrete situations differing from each other in a thousand ways, the rules and regulations being imperfect, there still are many weak links in China Customs’ supervision and control of exports and imports. As a result, smuggling can’t be completely eradicated. Meanwhile, there still are many risks existing in law enforcement or corruption, because some customs officers who affect the Customs operation in influential positions might abuse the discretion, which is essential for the development of Customs’ management to some extent. From the smuggling cases detected and many violating discipline or violation of rules and regulations cases in recent years, which betray China Customs’ weakness on building rules and regulations for internal control, we can draw a conclusion that there still are many problems to be settled and there is before us a heavy responsibility and a long way to go on the internal control of China Customs. A systematic solution is badly needed to China Customs rather than solution aiming only at the development of computers and internet technique or discretion of Customs officers. In this case, China Customs has paid close attention to the problem, produced many rules and regulations and taken various measures to strengthen its internal control. Nevertheless, as internal control as concerned, there are amount of facts of absence of theory system, disorder in taking measures and disability of working together in harmony in front of China Customs. All those above leads to flaws and blanks in Customs management and urgent needs for enhancing strictness of supervision and control over the goods and other articles entering or leaving China’s territory. Consequently, China Customs is in great need of forming complete, broad covering and effective system or mechanism of internal control.The introduction of the theory of internal control is the inevitable outcome after the organization and management developed in a certain stage, and also an important event since scientific management came into being. The research on internal control was started early in developed countries, and has yielded noteworthy results in practice. In recent years, the theory is gradually applied to the internal control of government. Compared with financial institutions or corporations, Chinese government’s application of internal control is still in its infancy now. The theory of COSO has been used widely in the theories of internal control, which tells us that the mechanism of internal control contains five factors as follow in turn, control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication and monitoring. All the factors above in a harmonious relationship with each other form a complete unified system, which reacts dynamically to environmental changes. By introducing the theory of COSO into China Customs management, this thesis is intending to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of Customs internal control and seek new theory or new method of internal control from Customs management.