Customs Officers are the primary method through which Planetary Interaction materials reach players from planets, after the Crucible expansion. The serve as in system storage and transfer points for PI goods, and contain a set amount of built in storage for each player using them.

The default customs offices of 0.0 space are owned and operated by InterBus, an NPC corporation. Their default tax rate is 17%. However, InterBus customs offices can be destroyed and replaced with player owned offices in low, null and w-space. This allows alliance to control who can and cannot do PI in their SOV (although this feature is largely broken in 0.0, as only members of the alliance who controls SOV can currently do PI in a given system, so out of alliance tax rates don't work at the moment), and similarly to set tax rates within the alliance.

TEST has currently rolled out a plan for ownership of Customs Offices in TEST space, whereby players/corporations that replace the existing InterBus customs offices will get 120% return on their investment by nationalizing their customs offices to Dreddit. This will allow alliance leaders to set TEST-wide tax rates (currently a default of 5%) as well as receive income from PI done within TEST space. Until players who own the Customs Offices transfer control to Dreddit, however, the alliance requires a no larger than 5% tax to be set.

Setting up a Customs Office requires the “CONFIG EQUIPMENT” role, which largely limits it to players with PACs, or non-Dreddit TEST members with roles in their particular corp. Configuring the tax and reinforcement settings requires the “STATION MANAGER” role. Customs Office transfers can be done by any player with “Director” or “CEO” roles, for transferring POCOs to Dreddit for nationalization.

To manufacture a POCO (Player Owned Customs Office), the corp setting up the new POCO must first purchase or manufacture a Customs Office Gantry from blueprint copies available on the market via faction war LP stores. Following this, the Gantry must be placed in orbit at the planet where the corp is looking to set up their gantry. From this base, the full Customs Office can be constructed, with the right materials.

Material Needed to Upgrade a Gantry to a full Customs Office

• Broadcast Node - 8
• Recursive Computing Module - 8
• Self-Harmonizing Power Core - 8
• Wetware Mainframe - 8

Once all of these materials are placed in the Gantry's Upgrade Hold and the upgrade is initiated, the Gantry will construct the full Customs Office in orbit of the planet.

Each POCO has the following stats:

• Total Shield EHP: 10,000,000
• Total Armor EHP: 2,500,000
• Total Structure EHP: 2,000,000
• 1 Reinforce Cycle (activated on shield EHP falling to or below 25%)
  • Reinforcement Duration: 24 hours + time until variance
  • Reinforcement Variance: 1 hour
  • POCO shields will be at 0% upon exiting reinforcement
  • If the shields are not repaired to above 25% after the initial reinforce, the POCO will not enter reinforcement again
  • InterBus Customs Offices do not have a reinforced mode

Taxation

• Tax percentage is taken from a previously determined number generated by CCP
  • Import taxes are always half the cost of export taxes
• Each tier of item has a fixed value
  • Advanced Commodities: 1,350,000.00 ISK
  • Specialized Commodities: 70,000.00 ISK
  • Refined Commodities: 9,000.00 ISK
  • Basic Commodities: 500.00 ISK
  • Planet Resources: 5.00 ISK
• Custom Tax rates can be set by POCO owner, although TEST mandates a maximum tax rate of 5% on non-alliance owned POCOs prior to nationalization