Your Car Is Stuck at Customs: How Much Time Do You Actually Have Under the New Rule?

Say you won a car at a Copart or IAAI auction, shipped it, and it has now reached the Azerbaijani border. But something's off in the paperwork, or the assessed customs duty turns out higher than expected and you can't raise the funds right away. In the past, delays like this could drag on for months — sometimes indefinitely. As of September 3, 2026, that has changed: there is now a concrete, legally fixed time limit on how long your car can sit at customs.

What changed

Amendments to the Customs Code adopted on June 19, 2026 took effect on September 3, 2026. One of them concerns the temporary storage regime — the period during which goods (including vehicles) that have crossed the border but haven't yet been fully cleared can sit in a customs warehouse or the owner's own storage facility. Under the new rule:

• The general limit is 4 months — goods, including vehicles, cannot remain in temporary storage beyond this.
• Goods prohibited from entering Azerbaijan get only 3 days — they must be removed or redirected to another procedure almost immediately.
• For perishable or non-commercial items, customs authorities can set an even shorter window (up to 1 month).

If clearance isn't completed and the goods aren't placed under another customs procedure before the deadline, "prescribed procedures" are applied to them — in other words, the matter stops being something the owner can simply leave open-ended.

Your options once the 4 months are up

The new rules give the owner of the goods — in our case, the vehicle — three clear paths:

• Pay the duties and take the car — complete the required customs payments and permits to formally clear the vehicle.
• Send it back — return the vehicle to its country of origin.
• Voluntarily surrender it to the state.

In practice, this means that if you won a car at Copart or IAAI, shipped it, but can't finish clearance within the 4-month window because of paperwork or funding issues, the decision is no longer entirely in your hands — the process moves forward regardless.

Why this matters especially for Copart/IAAI buyers

The usual causes of delay for auction-sourced cars tend to repeat themselves:

• Customs valuation coming in higher than expected — especially common with salvage or damaged-condition vehicles, where the assessed value can be disputed.
• Title and sale documents (Bill of Sale, Power of Attorney) being incomplete or in the wrong format.
• VIN discrepancies — when the actual condition doesn't match the auction listing, additional verification and paperwork can be required.
• Funds not being fully in place — particularly for larger-displacement or older vehicles where the duty amount wasn't calculated correctly in advance.

None of these risk factors have gone away under the new rule — you simply no longer have an indefinite amount of time to resolve them. You have a fixed 4-month window.

How to reduce the risk

• Check the VIN before you bid. Knowing about a salvage history, flood damage, or odometer discrepancy ahead of time lowers the chance of a surprise once the car reaches the border. Use our VIN decoder tool for this.
• Calculate the real customs cost in advance. Before bidding, work out the exact duty based on engine size, model year, and fuel type using our customs calculator, so you're not caught off guard at the border.
• Get your paperwork in order early. Make sure the title, Bill of Sale, and Power of Attorney are complete and accurate right after the auction — this prevents time being lost at the clearance stage.
• Don't sit on a delay. If a question or dispute comes up, contact customs authorities as early as possible instead of leaving it until the end of the 4-month window.

Bottom line

This change, in force since September 3, 2026, is part of a broader package of customs procedure simplifications — but it carries an important detail that's easy to miss: there is now a hard deadline on the "I'll deal with it later" approach. For anyone importing from Copart or IAAI, the safest path is to check the VIN before bidding, calculate the real cost upfront, and keep your paperwork ready — so the 4-month window never becomes a problem in the first place.