Time to stop order anything (small) from the UK...

While I don’t mind supporting RISC OS scene, my first Brexit-experience as a German is quite painfull ;-) I ordered the Application Tutorial from Drag’n Drop for 23 GPB…no problem with that…

…then due to Brexit now at my post office in Germany I got to pay 4.97 € for customs duty + 6.00 € “Auslagepauschale”. It seems as far as I read it up, I can avoid that 6.00 € if I register at my customs duty office but then I have to drive to the toll office to get the package which is kind of far. So its sound like a fee from the German post.

Well done, Brexiteers, I hope you’ll have fun with your missing tank lorry driver ;-)

This is mainly a German/EU thingy with the whole “customs reorg” that cancelled the Zollfreigrenze. Also means that purchasing small things from China et al has become much more expensive.

I regularly get deliveries from Amsterdam. VAT paid at source, no extra tax to pay yet a small present to Austria attracts close to 50% tax.

@ Kuemmel,

maybe this may help to understand what’s going on: https://www.thelocal.de/20210929/explained-why-people-in-germany-are-being-charged-to-receive-small-parcels-from-outside-the-eu/

Also this for what concern Brexit related shipment issues in general: https://www.thelocal.de/20210222/what-you-need-to-know-about-sending-post-between-germany-and-the-uk-after-brexit/

Hope this helps!

I regularly get deliveries from Amsterdam. VAT paid at source, no extra tax to pay.

How much, and who delivers?

There are no extra fees on inward transit (EU to UK) for items of £135 or less, or gifts under £39. However things may be complicates as EU sellers selling stuff in the UK have to register with HMRC in order to handle the VAT (as the previous EU regime no longer applies).

Over the £135, there will be import duty that can be up to 25% of the cost (depends upon what the thing is). Good luck wading through the lists of what duty applies to what thing.
Note that customs should not be applied to items of EU origin. Though it’s rather difficult to say what is and isn’t. If something is built in France out of parts made in China, what counts as its “origin”? You can ask the supplier for a proof of origin paper if you feel that you shouldn’t have to pay on an EU-produced item.

Import VAT is applied on top of all of this, and note that if you pay import VAT (the site I’m looking at is not clear if it’s exempt under the £135/£39 or not), then it’s a flat rate of 20%. But note well, it’s not the price of the products. It’s the total price paid, including postage, shipping, etc.

Then there are the couriers. They’re using the extra complexity as a way of heaping charges on. DHL says it’s charging 2.5% of the customs amount, with a minimum of £11. DPD is adding a fiver “clearance fee”, which must be paid before they’ll deliver. Royal Mail claims they’ll handle the VAT and duties for gifts over £39 and goods over £135, and if they have to, they’ll add on an eight pound handling fee.

Which lists a £150 pair of trainers as 16% duty (+£24), then 20% import VAT (+£30), plus Royal Mail’s eight quid, meaning the £150 trainers will cost £62 to receive them, totalling £212.

Oh, and as has been pointed out above, Germany has added some extra charges on too. I think France may be contemplating similar.

Welcome to the sunny uplands of Brexit.

While I don’t mind supporting RISC OS scene, my first Brexit-experience as a German is quite painfull ;-)

There are a few factors at play here, some of which only kicked in in July 2021 and are unrelated to the UK’s relationship with the EU.

There used to be something called the low value consignment relief which was a recognition of all the EU member states that it’s basically not worth the admin hassle of collecting sales tax on something that cost £5. Member states could set the exact threshold within certain bounds, and anything below that would just be waved past.

That’s great if you’re a consumer; you can buy a £5 pencil sharpener from China and it arrives no problem. But hang on, as CEO of Pencil Sharpener World here in the UK if I sell that same sharpener for £5 I must charge VAT so it now costs £6 to a domestic buyer. That causes market distortion.

So it was agreed to end the LVCR.

For high volume selling sites (like ebay for example) they will now charge you VAT at the time of purchase, and put that in an electronic declaration on the parcel so it doesn’t get stopped at customs. For lower volume sites they have the option of registering for the Import One Stop Shop then charging VAT at the time of purchase like the big guys, or send it zero rated (as Kuemmel’s book appears to have been) and see what happens. Usually the mail handler will charge the VAT plus a fee to present it to customs. That fee is maybe £8-£10 and gives you an idea of why the LVCR existed: you’d need a £50 item to be bothered collecting the VAT if it really does soak up £10 in admin.

Quite separate to the LVCR changes in July, the UK left the EU VAT scheme in January 2021. Therefore there was a 6 month window where EU customers should have bought as much low value stuff as they could from the UK because it would have been exported zero rated (being outside the single market) and the LVCR meant nobody looked at it on entry to the EU.

Unfortunately now there’s extra paperwork or taxes whichever side you’re sitting on: sender or recipient, inside or outside the EU.

In the UK books are zero-rated (or exempt, there is a subtle difference) for VAT so are they not zero rated in the EU? So if the customs declaration says they are a book, why are they being stopped?

So it was agreed to end the LVCR.

The EU is fond of bureaucracy. We have retained the LVCR for stuff imported into Great Britain.

It is, however, an extremely good idea to surcharge items from China. They arrive in UK (or EU) ‘post paid’ so that we have to deliver them for nothing as part of international agreements and there is no way we can check that they really did pay the cost of postage in China (several pounds) or whether they received massive (and perhaps hidden) state aid.

In the UK books are zero-rated (or exempt, there is a subtle difference) for VAT so are they not zero rated in the EU?

They’re not.

I don’t know about you, but I like to buy everything from AliExpress all the time. No, seriously. Even though at first I was afraid of this site, thinking that I would be cheated or that the goods would go too long, and in the end will come all broken. In short, I had enough reasons to fear Ali, as it is affectionately called by those who have penetrated its atmosphere. But at some point, I got over myself and ordered something more expensive than a crappy smartphone case. I ordered myself a new phone, it came out to be a pretty penny, so I was apprehensive. But then I found a helpful website postsendungsverfolgung.com, which helped me in tracking my product, which for a moment came in perfect condition.

They are pretty useless if you dispute anything. I bought an IR illuminator for about £13 and it offered include a 12V power supply for another £2. A month later it arrived and the illuminator was fine, but the PSU was an EU wall wart, so useless. I raised a dispute to refund of the £2, but it was denied, I applied and it was denied again on the basis the illuminator didn’t come with a charger. The problem was AliExpress passed on the dispute directly to the vendor of the illuminator, and there was no way to make a claim against AliExpress itself for supplying the PSU.

It was only £2 so I’m not that bothered (and I had a couple of other 12V PSUs already), but I am wary of buying a £120 weather station as there are several options and if they send the wrong parts I’m not confident it would be sorted out.

I bought a product and it arrived two months later, but was the wrong model. When I raised a dispute they said they’d send me a new one. It never arrived, and I suspect it was never sent in the first place. Of course, this was now ~four months after the original order and the dispute window had closed by that point!