UK customs

[jellybirddesigns]

Does anybody know how customs duties are applied in the UK?

The reason I ask is because I made a sale to the UK which was valued at $36.00  (£17.20).

I believe that the threshold is £15.00, so the total was just a little bit over.

The buyer left positive feedback, but mentioned that she had to pay about £12.00 in taxes, which is about 2/3 of the value of the items!

Why do they land up paying so much?

[digupatin]

Have a read here  https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/overview

[pennyforum14]

UK has VAT on imports over GBP15 (including postage).  The rate is 20%, or is it 22%?  Plus the tax is processed by Royal Mail and there is a further GBP8 fee for the processing.  So if the total purchase was 17.2, the tax will be 3.44 or 3.79, plus 8 = 11.44 or 11.79GBP.  Accounting for exchange rate  fluctuations, that sounds aout right.  Those fees are not the seller's responsibility, the buyer is liable for them.

[lane-ends]

They have to pay it to post office in order to pick item up and they also have to pay a post office handling fee, so not all that charge is customs. I think handling fee is a flat fee so it makes cheaper items seem disproportionaly expense.

Also if you do get negged over it you can get it removed

[jellybirddesigns]

Wow, that's a pretty high rate.

You would think that they would pay 20% on the amount OVER the £15.00 threshold, ie £2.20 x 20%, not £17.20 x 20%.

The $8.00 processing is a killer.

Fortunately they left good feedback, so I'm ok in that respect.

I do say on my listings that buyers are responsible for all taxes etc, etc, but I think that folk in the UK don't actually realise how low their threshold is compared to other countries like Aus and the USA. I know that Canada has a low threshold too - CAD$25.00.

[davewil1964]

It's the same here.

The threshold is, currently, $1000, but if it's over you pay on the full amount, not the over $1000 bit.