To be annoyed at myself for just wasting money....Have you ever done anything so stupid?

[Mogs43]

Bought some make up brushes from the Scott Barnes website- cost just over £120- a ridiculous treat I know (needed cheering up and thought I would spoil myself in the sales after saving up-never again).. Was even more shocked to be charged £56 for customs charges!!! Eek - I Haven't a clue why HMRC put such high taxes on - will this happen even more once we leave the EU??

Eek! I didn't know customs charges were so expensive either. But yes customs charges will affect us when we leave the EU. Unless they manage to get some sort of agreement as these things go both ways.

Custom charges have massively increased recently. We regularly send parcels from Australia to England and Scotland and my friends and family are having to stump up for huge customs charges (which I reimburse them for as I don’t thi I they should have to pay fir a gift I’ve sent). The last parcel I sent had earrings valued at approximately £60 and my friend was charged £26 pounds to collect. It’s ridiculous. Parcels coming into Australia thankfully have no customs charge (or I’ve yet to receive a parcel with a charge?).

@Mogs43 give yourself a break. We all do stuff that on examination does make much sense

Are they any good?

ScotsinOz if it's a gift how do they even know the value?
Quick look at HMRC website if a gift is less than £36 it's free of customs and vat. Ok you declare value for insurance but might be worth taking the risk of saying the gift is worth £30 next time to dodge the customs

Can you cancel the order? I often buy makeup brushes from America - Wayne Goss and Chickuhodo - but on Beautylish they always calculate and add on the duties and taxes so you don’t get a nasty surprise!

yes customs fees into the UK can be ridiculous, as Scots mentions - I have stopped sending gifts from Japan to the UK as I am worried about extortionate customs fees

I order gifts through Amazon UK which is not as personal.

Yikes, that’s a ridiculous customs charge. I think the Feelunique UK website sells them. Sorry OP you probably didn’t want to know that 😬

10 years ago i purchased some second hand books from someone on a forum in america for 11 pounds including postage i had to pay 63 pounds in uk customs to receive them. i had not expected a private secondhand sale to have customs costs. apparently gifts can also charged customs too!!

If the UK and the US agree a free trade deal, that would change. It only currently applies because we are still in the EU, which determines tariffs on behalf of all 28 countries.

That's no consolation to you, OP, but at least you'll know for next time. It happened to one of my friends and she was equally shocked.

Last year I bought a Hobonichi diary from Amazon .... I have no idea of what I paid but I don’t recall it being excessive. As a lover of all things Japanese I went on their website and ended up buying a hand painted cover for my diary. I’m slightly vague on how much it was but I ended up being stung for expensive duties when it got delivered. This hyear I thought I must get another Hobonichi diary to justify the cost of the expensive cover. Obviously I’m not buying it from Japan so I went back to Amazon. This year it’s £40...... £40!!!!!😮. Of course I bought it... I had too! ( the cover isn’t even that robust because, you know, it’s hand painted )

I bought a microphone from an eBay seller in the US. They were a lot cheaper. Until customers charged me £54
Felt like I had been swindled

Please don’t do as @Blackbear19 suggests. The rules are the rules and we no one likes paying tax but none likes the NHS being underfunded or class sizes being too large either.

To an extent it’s just bad luck if you get charged. My mum ordered the same item twice, only once was she charged.
They pull a percentage of packages out and check them.

Customs charges are high because in addition to customs duty you pay VAT, then a handling fee, and charges to the Royal Mail for administering it.

www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad

@SingingLily
Why would the US agree a better deal with the UK, than with a huge group containing France, Germany, Italy, Spain etc etc. It’s like charging a large group of school kids at a zoo more per person than a single kid rocking up individually.
I mean, with Trump who TF knows, but it would surely go against the most fundamental of business principles, ie client more money = better service.

I'm not sure why you think the costs would come down if we leave the EU? Surely we will have to pay customs from there as well as all of the other countries?

I once ordered DH a jumper from an NFL team, from their US store as they have a better selection than the UK store. Jumper cost about $40. Customs was about $54. Never again!

Agree that it's luck. I bought two second hand books recently, about £15 each, and didn't pay customs on either. Even with customs they would have been cheaper than the £80+ each I would have been charged by UK sellers but it's nice I didn't have to.

Bodear if you are so fond of rules are rules and paying VAT and sales taxes, I hope you never purchase anything at the Duty Free shop in the airport.

Its totally ridiculous to say that a gift that has already been subject to VAT or whatever Oz sales tax should be subject to more duty. People are not stupid they will start gifting via Amazon the greatest tax dodgers of the world rather than be stung for postage and customs charges.

Will it happen more once we leave the EU?

Probably, yeah. Since that is kinda the whole point of the EU.

I don't understand some of the amounts on here though - I thought anything under £135 just got 20% Vat slapped on it. Some of these figures quoted seem awfully high.

@Blackbear19 just realised that you could even use a foreign currency card to buy from different Amazon sites - excellent, thank you. Agree that paying two lots of tax is stupid.

I'm not sure why you think the costs would come down if we leave the EU? Surely we will have to pay customs from there as well as all of the other countries?

Who knows, the fact is we'll be able to negotiate trade terms/tarriffs so it may be higher or lower or the same.

The charges on USA goods really hack me off.

Customs charges are preposterous. I don't understand how they decide you have to pay that much.

I thought anything under £135 just got 20% Vat slapped on it

Plus £8 Royal Mail handling fee. £50 item would be £18 in charges. Plus it's not up to the receiver to decide the value of the item. A £1000 watch declared as a £25 gift would be correctly revalued by HMRC.

This is going to be so much more of a problem after Brexit as the same charges will apply to Europe too.