Duty?

[djm1121]

Forgive me if I have posted this question before but I did do a search on this forum and did not see a post from me regarding this question. I am trying to determine if is cheaper buying a Pelikan from overseas (Europe) or stateside? I wish there was a tool one could use to figure duty and taxes. Appelboom has got some good prices but I am afraid once duty and taxes are applied that good deal could go up in smoke...

[OCArt]

If I remember correctly Appelboom now has a store in  the states too.

[gyasko]

You’re exempt on the first $800.     After deducting VAT, i think you’d definitely be under that.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Fritz will be selling at 16-19%** less than the price listed because that includes VAT tax.

**Was 16% for the Virus, may have gone back up to the normal 19% tax.

 

200 Petrol...E137/$150's vs well over $200 for a US seller is something I commented on yesterday. That $150/E137 is the price before you take away the tax.

 

 

[sirgilbert357]

20 hours ago, djm1121 said:

Forgive me if I have posted this question before but I did do a search on this forum and did not see a post from me regarding this question. I am trying to determine if is cheaper buying a Pelikan from overseas (Europe) or stateside? I wish there was a tool one could use to figure duty and taxes. Appelboom has got some good prices but I am afraid once duty and taxes are applied that good deal could go up in smoke...

 

I've bought from Appelboom before and never had to pay duty or extra taxes. To be honest, it may have been luck of the draw, but I've never spent more than 500 bucks in an order, so...

 

I'd buy from Appelboom again with complete confidence. Even if you get hit with duty, it's likely much cheaper than buying the same Pelikan from a vendor in the USA.

[sirgilbert357]

18 hours ago, gyasko said:

You’re exempt on the first $800.     After deducting VAT, i think you’d definitely be under that.

 

Ah...well, that's why I've never had an issue then.

[Mercian]

Here in Inglistan, HMRC now requires the delivery company to charge you VAT (@20%) on gifts that are sent to you (if the declared value of the gift is more than £39).

 

VAT is charged (through the delivery company) @20% on all goods except gifts whose declared value is less than £39.

 

If you purchase an item from outside the UK that has a declared value greater than £135 and not more than £630, HMRC charges Import Duty @2.5% on the goods AND the cost of delivery and then that VAT @20% on top of it for both of those things.

I.e. HMRC taxes you for their ‘value-adding activity’ of charging you Import Duty.
The contemptuous snark of that bit makes me bloody livid 😡

 

Oh, lastly, should you be stupid enough to order anything from outside the UK that has a declared value of over £630, HMRC now requires you to ring them up to find out the rate at which they will charge you Import Duty prior to charging you that Import Duty on the goods and the delivery, and then additionally charging you 20% VAT on the goods, the delivery, and on their Import Duty.

 

So, if you still live in the UK, you can now forget trying to buy e.g. a laptop from Eire (with which we share a border) France (‘fully’ 22 miles from the UK), or any other ‘further-flung’ country.
Ditto for car parts, and even various fountain pens.

 

Innit bloody marvellous? ☹️

 

[djm1121]

Well, I am about to find out, I just placed an order this afternoon for a Pelikan M1000 fine nib.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Mercian,

I believe Conway Stewart has started making pens again in a old back room shop. The old guys on German TV did look like skilled craftsmen.

 

Sounds to me is there is many openings in the smuggling branch; in GB.

With Scotland going, can Wales be far behind? Back pack loaded smugglers of foreign pens and inks.

 

.

[Dione]

On 9/13/2021 at 12:14 AM, Mercian said:

Here in Inglistan, HMRC now requires the delivery company to charge you VAT (@20%) on gifts that are sent to you (if the declared value of the gift is more than £39).

 

VAT is charged (through the delivery company) @20% on all goods except gifts whose declared value is less than £39.

 

If you purchase an item from outside the UK that has a declared value greater than £135 and not more than £630, HMRC charges Import Duty @2.5% on the goods AND the cost of delivery and then that VAT @20% on top of it for both of those things.

I.e. HMRC taxes you for their ‘value-adding activity’ of charging you Import Duty.
The contemptuous snark of that bit makes me bloody livid 😡

 

This is not exactly what it says on the gov.uk web site

Firstly it confirms "You will not have to pay anything to the delivery company to receive goods worth less than £135 unless they’re gifts over £39 or excise goods (for example, alcohol and tobacco)."

For items that aren't gifts VAT will have already been included when you paid the seller so you won't be charged it through the delivery company.

No duty is payable on non-excise goods worth £135 or less.

 

[djm1121]

DHL is apparently taking on the delivery of my M1000, they are also a freight forwarding service walking it through customs so I won't have to, nice.... I have never used this service e.g. DHL prior to the order so I am kind of apprehensive on what to expect. On a side note, boy is Appelboom quick. I ordered pen with Tuning and smoothing as a nib option and it ships the very next day on the 15! Now that's service.

[Mercian]

On 9/14/2021 at 9:10 PM, Bo Bo Olson said:

Sounds to me is there is many openings in the smuggling branch; in GB.

With Scotland going, can Wales be far behind? Back pack loaded smugglers of foreign pens and inks.

 

I will mainly be hoping that any such 'importation entrepreneurs' will bring in a 2013 M800 in Brown Tortoiseshell for me - the auction prices on those nowadays are bloody eye-watering!

There's a very limited 'supply' of them, especially so within the UK, so the 20% VAT on top of the purchase price PLUS whatever rate of Import Duty HMRC choose to pull out of their hat on top of that 20% VAT will certainly be a 'non-trivial' sum of money 🙄

[Mercian]

  

On 9/15/2021 at 6:50 AM, Dione said:

This is not exactly what it says on the gov.uk web site

Firstly it confirms "You will not have to pay anything to the delivery company to receive goods worth less than £135 unless they’re gifts over £39 or excise goods (for example, alcohol and tobacco)."

For items that aren't gifts VAT will have already been included when you paid the seller so you won't be charged it through the delivery company.

No duty is payable on non-excise goods worth £135 or less.

 

 

Except that the statement "the seller will have included VAT in the total you paid" that HMRC have put up on that page is incorrect.
It is not true.
It is false.

If, for instance, you go to the website of any retailer inside the EU, and look at what they say about their shipping/delivery costs, they say that they do NOT charge VAT on purchases made from outside the EU.
The UK is no longer in the EU; it is now outside the Customs Union.
As such, no EU retailer now collects VAT for the UK government (HMRC).
The UK is now not in a Customs Union with any other country; no retailer outside of the UK collects VAT for HMRC.
So, if/when I purchase anything from outside the UK, the retailer will not have included VAT in the total that I paid.

We must therefore discount (as erroneous, in that it is predicated on a false statement) the statement on the HMRC website that...
"You will not have to pay anything to the delivery company to receive goods worth less than £135 unless they’re gifts over £39 or excise goods"
...and must instead revert to the very first statement on the HMRC page, the one that states that:

"You’ll be contacted by Royal Mail, Parcelforce or the courier company if you need to pay any VAT, duty or delivery charges (‘handling fees’) to receive your goods.

They’ll send you a bill stating exactly which fees you need to pay.

They’ll normally hold your parcel for about 3 weeks. If you have not paid the bill by then, your parcel will be returned to the sender".

The thing that really annoys me is of course not the need to pay VAT†, but rather the fact that the 'Import Duty' that is levied on goods with a declared value of over £135 is ALSO levied on the cost of the delivery, and that BOTH of those levies have VAT charged on top of them.
To me, that part of it feels like a deliberate insult. It feels like an abuse. An exercise in opportunistic gouging. On the grounds of 'Whaddya gonna do about it, sucker? You can't stop us charging you, so pay up!'.
VAT is, after all, supposedly not merely a 'purchase tax', but is instead 'Value Added Tax'; it is supposedly a tax that is levied on activities that 'add value' to the product that one is purchasing. This is why e.g. VAT is not charged on food bought in a supermarket, but is charged on meals bought in a pub (because the pub is 'adding value' to the food by preparing it and serving it to you).

My thinking is informed by years of dealing with government agencies here in the course of my job.
For full clarity, I am not claiming that the factually-incorrect statement on the HMRC website has been put there out of malice, or with any deliberate intent to deceive punters; I am saying that I have seen many mistakes made by many large organisations (of which government is one), and that I am well aware that 'oversights' (which is what this appears to be) occur depressingly-often.

Anyway, as the little light on my laptop that blinks red to warn me that I have used-up almost all of the ink on the internet has just started blinking red yet again, I shall now get down from my soapbox.

Slàinte,
M.

† This is because e.g. the rates at which the UK and EU levy VAT are almost identical. Whichever one of the two of these I have to pay it makes little difference to the final price that I pay (as long as I am not having to also pay the other one).

[Dione]

28 minutes ago, Mercian said:

Except that the statement "the seller will have included VAT in the total you paid" that HMRC have put up on that page is incorrect.
It is not true.
It is false.

If, for instance, you go to the website of any retailer inside the EU, and look at what they say about their shipping/delivery costs, they say that they do NOT charge VAT on purchases made from outside the EU.
The UK is no longer in the EU; it is now outside the Customs Union.
As such, no EU retailer now collects VAT for the UK government (HMRC).
The UK is now not in a Customs Union with any other country; no retailer outside of the UK collects VAT for HMRC.
So, if/when I purchase anything from outside the UK, the retailer will not have included VAT in the total that I paid.

I've only looked at three web sites so far: Couronne du Compte still charges VAT for UK buyers.

Pen Realm in the US charges VAT for UK buyers.

ebay charges VAT for UK buyers

[Linger]

Oooh how marvelous were the days before Brexit if one wanted to buy “in Europe”…

 

Anyway, it is not so nice on the continent either. As of last summer, every purchase from outside the bloc is hit with customs duties and VAT (and yes, the base includes the transport costs). No threshold. Which makes buying something from e.g. Japan an expensive endeavor. In the US there is a threshold…800 dollars…under which (declared) value, NO custom duties or sales tax is added. This would potentially be a reason to want to live there, rather than here, as i like Japanese stuff and not everything is available here. But I prefer to live in a democracy, so alas, paying taxes I wil…

 

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

I don't live in the UK but paying ransom in gold for fumble fingers mishandling packages as handling fees should be taken to Den Haag as a crime against humanity.

 

[grainweevil]

2 hours ago, Linger said:

Oooh how marvelous were the days before Brexit if one wanted to buy “in Europe”…

Yeah, on this forum alone there's been a steady stream of people in the EU complaining they now can't readily access things that are, guess what, in the UK. Funny how the "We'll send you sausages" brigade failed to realise it would work both ways.

 

Fact is that all governments* have woken up to how much revenue they were losing through online sales, and they've closed the loophole. The glory days are over; welcome to the new reality. Good news - it pays for hospitals and schools and other things that are, arguably, bit more important than another pen.

 

*Apart from the US, who...Well, honestly I have no idea what they're trying to achieve. Do they?

[Bo Bo Olson]

46 minutes ago, grainweevil said:

*Apart from the US, who...Well, honestly I have no idea what they're trying to achieve. Do they?

As an American, who hadn't realized he was living in safe exile....full health care as retired, and other 'socialistic' (civilized)  things.

Regan destroyed my once great nation....with help of export all production bankers for this year's bonus.

 

Fear rant deleted....but I think any woman who can stock a shelf or run a cash register should move to a blue state; and let San Francisco men's bars become popular in Conservative woman hating states.

I was once a Goldwater boy.....and often considered my self a zig-zag middle of the roader....but in 2022....I'd be labeled a a Commie, in Sanders is just barely European middle of the road.

 

Again rant deleted.........and I most deeply fear for my nation.

[Nyanzilla]

I live outside the EU too. But it's only 5 km to the border, so I have my stuff sent to an address in Germany where I can pick it up. But the VAT in my country is only 8% and in Germany it's 19%, so in most cases there is not much to save, except for very high shipping costs for certain goods.

[Runnin_Ute]

When I bought my M400 White Tortoise, the one place I saw it on a US based dealers website it was $399 before shipping. I purchased from a UK dealer and my shipped cost was about $225 USD. No additional duties.