Model Boat Mayhem
Mess Deck: General Section => Chit-Chat => Topic started by: Martin (Admin) on February 13, 2014, 03:55:41 pm
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Can some explain this to me?
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glad im not the only one :(( they add vat to the cost of the items imported and then add the clearance fee (which i might add can be anything) for having to add the import tax and tell you you need to pay it %% i got stung £18.75 for a item from the states that only cost me £26 about £15 of it was a handling charge now called a clearance fee {-) {-) {-) what a joke
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If UKIP have their way you will be paying that for everything imported from Europe, nice thought isn't it?
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If UKIP have their way you will be paying that for everything imported from Europe, nice thought isn't it?
And what prey, is your basis for that statement?
LB
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If it's real, You get stung on importing anything over £16 value - it used to £18 but they reduced the threshold - it's a 'we say so' tax and the handling fee is extortion.
Unfortunately, you have to pay it to get your parcel.
If it's fake, it's a scam to get your cash on the off chance you are expecting a parcel from overseas. (how did they get your e-mail address?)
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It's what happens when you try to buy stuff cheap, Martin.
Any opportunity HMRC has to charge relatively insignificant amounts and it's in there like a rat up a drainpipe. Mention Vodafone, Starbucks or Amazon however and they're nowhere to be found.
"The Post Office" is the new definition of "blatant overcharging", especially now that it has shareholders who want even more than just an instant two quid profit per share over issue price. Put the two together and the total grief is far more than the sum of the parts. The fee incidentally is charged to you for the PO telling HMRC that you owe them money!
There's just one rule and it's dead simple; they've got your gear and you're not going to get it until you pay up.
Ce n'est pas magnifique, mon brave..............
O - and Nordsee is quite correct. At the moment when you buy anything from an EU supplier you pay their domestic VAT, whatever that rate might be. There's no paperwork; it just goes straight into the till. If we leave the EU then ALL purchases of goods from anywhere outside the UK (even Scotland??) will be VAT-able as imports into the UK.
Buy shares in the Post Office NOW! You know it makes sense!
DM
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I can't understand why everyone gets so worked up about this.
It has always been the case.
It is nothing new.
Get over it.
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Martin is your fault
when you have money on the cover, remember the IRS has eyes everywhere, is not it DAVE
(http://i55.servimg.com/u/f55/15/37/42/64/wood-b10.jpg) (http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=3372&u=15374264)
you want to hide from me?
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It's what happens when you try to buy stuff cheap, Martin.
Au contraire O great Sahib! ok2
It was a gift of home made 'Chile jam' from a friend and he marked it Gift $0.00 value
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Martin is your fault
when you have money on the cover, remember the IRS has eyes everywhere, is not it DAVE
you want to hide from me?
I think still got his hand in with the 'old gang!'.....
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You got doubly done, Grasshopper.
There ain't any VAT on jam {-) even if it's from Chile, 'cos it's classed as food, dude - but you can't expect any organisation that charges eight quid for a single-line Customs entry to know anything about the VAT Zero Rate regulations, can you?
I'd take it up with the Post Office and HMRC - if you have the stomach and the patience...............and no, I wouldn't have anything to do with the present bunch of idiots in HMRC.
Gamekeeper turned poacher, me!
Dave M
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If you order from HobbyKing you can decide what percentage of the actual price you want to appear on the Customs invoice and whether it is Trade,Gift or a Sample.
15% is very popular I am told, but I always choose the 100% option O0 and am sure you do too.
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the HMRC will get there YTS to make a number up and the the get there make parcel farce to let you know and charge you for collecting your parcel from there place . want it dilivered it to your door thats more. It is nothing more than day light theft. I have had loads of parcels from the us and not once have they got it close.
What they do is give you a real real crap exchange rate this waks up the tax. If it comes via any other way than USPS they take that as a service and wack that vat on that even though 80% + of the service was used up out side the uk LOL.
There are ways around these problems and marking the parcel as gift is not one of them
john
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Not quite knowing what the import VAT rate is or was I think I paid the so called import VAT on the postage charges as well!!!! >>:-( <*< Isn't the extra or odd £8.00 what the post office charges as an administration cost for handling the paper work.
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The 'import' VAT rate is the same as whatever it is normally - 20% for most things.
Duty and VAT are charged on the total (declared) cost of goods plus postage. This is because in the past some unscrupulous traders would sell something for £0.01 and then charge £10/50/500 for the postage. Loophole closed!
Duty is calculated first (if applicable) and then VAT is charged on the total of goods, postage and Duty (Yes they charge VAT on the first tax !@!.
The importing carrier - PO/Parcelfarce, Fedex, UPS, whoever, is required to collect the relevant charges for HMRC. The 'clearance fee' is their charge for providing this service. It is decided by each carrier but is not dependent on the value of the transactions. £8 is very cheap - I've seen £20.
As Sandy says, this is as it has been for many years now. It's taxes - it'll help pay for flood defences, or the NHS, or MPs expenses ...
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How do they come to that value and then say it worth nothing but charge VAT
to the tune of £12.20??? How is VAT on £0.00 £12.20????? >>:-(
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So what you are saying is that:-
You paid nothing for the goods.
You paid nothing for the postage/shipping of the goods.
Your box arrived worthless and you are stunned you have to pay £12.20 on nothing.
You're stunned, I'm gobsmacked.
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.... and I haven't even got the parcel yet! >:-o
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Drat ... my sarcasm, which is the lowest form of wit, may have got lost in translation. :-)
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Parcelforce once brought three identical packages of motors into the UK from the USA for us; same goods, same value, same weight, same everything. They managed to calculate and declare three completely different values for the VAT, ranging from £18 to £34. None was correct, but not as wrong as the VAT due on zero-rated food - of any value. VAT at zero-rate on zero value is doubly nowt! It's worth taking up for the amount charged; at least you can have a bit of fun with the imbeciles.
DM
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DAVE if you protest you'll pay 3 x 34 lbs
do not think about 3x18
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J-P
The irony is that we were entitled to claim the whole lot back as input VAT! Martin can't do that because it was a non-business import.
L'ironie, c'est que nous étions en droit de réclamer le retour beaucoup comme la TVA! Martin ne peut pas le faire parce que c'était une importation non commerciale.
Dave M
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.... and I haven't even got the parcel yet! >:-o
If you haven't got it yet how do you know what the sender put on the customs label?
I've been charged 'wrong' because the sender put the wrong values on the label.
The importer may open the package to check the contents - almost certainly will if there no labelling.
Some foods do attract vat, possibly not duty.
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http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageLibrary_PublicNoticesAndInfoSheets&propertyType=document&columns=1&id=HMCE_CL_000118#P56_3120 (http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageLibrary_PublicNoticesAndInfoSheets&propertyType=document&columns=1&id=HMCE_CL_000118#P56_3120) (See Para 2.2)
There's no VAT on jam. Trust me; I did the job for 31 years. I still have nightmares about it (seriously).
Anyone tasked with the job of making Customs entries (especially for a fee) should be aware of the VAT Zero Rate Schedule. It's one of the basic parts of being a shipping clerk. This particular idiot was not only unaware of it, but also managed to multiply zero by 20% and get £12.20.
What scares me the most is that he/she was probably the brightest candidate they interviewed....................
DM
BTW There's no VAT on chocolate body-paint either. Who drafts these regulations?? :o
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There's no VAT on jam. Trust me; I did the job for 31 years. I still have nightmares about it (seriously).
Maybe, but until Martin gets the parcel and can see what the contents were declared as (eg. as the sender just put gift instead of jam) we don't know if the charge is actually wrong.
This particular idiot was not only unaware of it, but also managed to multiply zero by 20% and get £12.20.
Where does your zero come from? The document Martin has published doesn't show the 'taken' base values of the contents or postage, so we don't know how the £12.20 came about. It suggests a total value of £61, which may be the postage (that's a lot), but again, we have to wait to see the declaration label before judging the collecting company.
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Where does your zero come from?
It was a gift of home made 'Chile jam' from a friend and he marked it Gift $0.00 value (Martin's text formatting, not mine)
Ref the postage, the VAT liability of any separately-identifed carriage costs follows that of the supply of goods. The value for Import Duty would include the carriage to the first point of arrival in the UK after clearance at the port - that's if there were any duty payable. I don't have a copy of the Tariff to hand but I feel pretty confident in saying there isn't any duty payable on chilli jam.
A valid commodity code (TARIC code)) for the goods has to be declared on a Customs entry. If the sender did not identify the goods sufficiently to enable that to happen then the matter should have been referred to the importer, who is the person legally responsible for classifying the goods. See HMRC Notice 600. In this case that would be Martin.
(You don't work for the Post Office, do you?)
DM
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Latest:
Post Office have decided to return item to sender.
I've asked them to stop the return and see what the customs declaration actually says on it!
Last time my friend sent me the jam it arrived without question..... got lucky or it arrived on a Friday I guess!
It's great Jam ( a little weird, strawberry jam with a chilli kick! ) .... but I'm not sure it's worth all this effort. >:-o
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You've lost me Martin. Where do they say that the value is nothing? They say the excise duty, etc are all zero but it doesn't mention the value of the imported goods. For that matter, neither do you but you know what you paid and can work out the percentage of duty owed from that value. I can't understand your argument. We have always paid import tax.
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It was a gift of home made 'Chile jam' from a friend and he marked it Gift $0.00 value (Martin's text formatting, not mine)
Ref the postage, the VAT liability of any separately-identifed carriage costs follows that of the supply of goods. The value for Import Duty would include the carriage to the first point of arrival in the UK after clearance at the port - that's if there were any duty payable. I don't have a copy of the Tariff to hand but I feel pretty confident in saying there isn't any duty payable on chilli jam.
A valid commodity code (TARIC code)) for the goods has to be declared on a Customs entry. If the sender did not identify the goods sufficiently to enable that to happen then the matter should have been referred to the importer, who is the person legally responsible for classifying the goods. See HMRC Notice 600. In this case that would be Martin.
(You don't work for the Post Office, do you?)
DM
Looking at the page you linked earlier jam/preserves aren't listed specifically. So it's interpretable whether they are ZR or SR. As a 'gift' I'd probably go SR as in that circumstance it's likely to be something special rather than a basic foodstuff.
I can't imagine the PO or whoever is going to bother to get into a lot of correspondence with 'the importer' for an £8 fee and low values.
No I don't work for any carrier, or ever did. I have simply bought a lot of stuff (several $1000) from abroad over the years, mainly USA, so I have researched this and have some experience of it. 9 times out of 10 there hasn't been a problem - the few times the charges were wrong were always down to the sender putting wrong or ambiguous information on the customs declaration - most recently a book which the sender just described as 'goods' ... so I was hit 20% VAT. Not the PO's fault.
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Nope, not paid anything, still trying to clarify the charges cabman
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Last time my friend sent me the jam it arrived without question..... got lucky or it arrived on a Friday I guess!
Luck certainly used to come into it, but with the rise of internet, and therefore international, shopping I think they are cracking down on stuff labelled as 'gift'. It's a 'loophole' like the postage used to be. I suspect it might be simpler/cheaper for your friend to put 'Homemade jam $1.00' on the label in future.
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You've got me hooked on this one now. I've read it properly now. I have read the following:
HMRC.gov.uk.a guide for international post users Reference notice 143 (Jan 2013) which states that from Jan 2013 gifts with a value less than £36 in value will be free from any import tax, etc providing that the sender has declared the value. You mention that he states that the value is zero. Is it possible that you can't have something with a zero value? Good luck but don't get in a PICKLE and PRESERVE your patience.
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Its a wierd thing is importation. My son regularly buys his T shirts from the U.S (no I have no idea why) His last parcel was 1 t shirt cost $22 inc postage. It arrived here and had 24% import duty added to it and then a handling fee of £8. So he paid almost the equivelent of the t shirt costs to get it off the post office!
Its odd really, if they come parcel force you always pay the fee. If its the local posty and he catches you at home 9 times out of 10 he just gives you the parcel! That'll probably change now its privatised {:-{
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The problem with the law is that there are at least a hundred bar-room lawyers for every professional.
DM
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If the value of the item is £135 GBP or more then you will pay standard rate VAT on import You will also have to pay DUTY on the item, and this is calculated on the price of the item, the postage fee and also packaging price, all added up TOGETHER and the duty will most likely be 5% of that total.
I've just bought a 1/50th diecast model from Australia at £132 gbp - no VAT charged. I paid minimum postage [airmail] and was not charged duty [their discretion - HMRC]
If in doubt, phone HMRC and they will advise you on what you may have to pay!
Garth
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My mistake; a hundred and one.
DM
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Import duty seems to be wrong every time if they charge it!
I bought a PulseJet engine from China the end of last year, the declared value by the seller was $30 , I paid $140 including shipping , invoice in box was removed by customs and they then charged me about £300 VAT, no duty....just £300 worth of VAT and a £30 customs clearing charge by parcefarce
To get the jet I paid it....., filled the form in to claim it back as being incorrect, provided documentation and have heard nothing, I dont think I will ever get that back, most expensive china pulsejet ever , I can just about get a quality racing one from Italy for that