THANKS A LOT BREXITEERS (and good luck when you order items from abroad)!

[customchaos]

I recently bought some art through an online website (think, a bit like Etsy, but not that one). So the item was £400, plus £140 delivery, which I did think it was a lot, but it was being shipped from Russia. Anyway, two weeks later, I get an email from the website company, to tell me the item is being held at the depot and I am required to contact Parcelforce to pay a customs tax. I phoned up and the tax is to the tune of £140. For an item costing £400! Apparently this is the new post-Brexit norm. Just to get what you have ordered over the border!

I’ve also ordered more art from Bulgaria which is apparently in its way now and I’m really worried as this was more expensive (just under £3000). Does this mean I going to be charged another ridiculous amount as customs tax?

I’ve been on to HMRC today and they are no help, beyond saying “yes this is because of Brexit,” “No we’re not sure if you’ve been charged the right amount or why,” and “You will need to pay first and them make a claim if you think you’ve been overcharged.”

So basically, is this the end of ordering from abroad? What madness is this?

@customchaos

No - the difference is, normally when you order from India, USA or wherever, the import taxes are included within any delivery charge you pay upfront.

Now, this is not happening. When items ordered by private individuals arrive in the U.K., you are liable to be hit with additional charges which were not declared upfront. You have no recourse and no way of challenging how these additional charges have been calculated.

So, the example I gave - a painting on a canvas (not large or heavy at all) - £403 from Russia.

I’ve already paid £146 delivery upfront, thinking that should cover everything. In the past, it would have done.

But no. Now it’s being held at SW London Depot. I have 18 remaining days to pay £139 if I want to receive the item. The breakdown I have been given is as follows -

£12 handling fee (this is Parcelforce)
£42.37 duty tax
£85.51 VAT

So if I was to pay this, essentially I would have paid £285 for delivery of an item that cost £403. What’s that, 70% or something of the price of the goods?

I think it may have been calculated wrongly but THERE IS NO RECOURSE TO CHALLENGE the cost. I have to pay first to be able to legally challenge.

Apparently this is now applied to anything received into the U.K. over £135. So anything you may order - watch out!

Years ago I bought from USA some clothing. I had to pay tax when it got delivered if I wanted it. I buy some scandi clothes and some shops are in USA or Canada. They already warn you that you might have to pay import taxes

Btw Etsy has got an option to buy from shops in the uk. That’s what I tend to use and I guess many people do as well.

@CheesyWeez

"So to the statement "Poor hard done by Remoaners, beaten in a democratic referendum by those nasty Brexiteers. Boo hoo." I dispute that the referendum was democratic"

But you're happy to vilify Trump when he disputes an election ?!

And you voted to stay in the biggest undemocratic organisation the world has ever seen?!

It seems to me your view of democracy is a tad selective.

Can I just add I have bought 4 paintings from Russia over the last year. I am not sure what is going on over there but there are some amazingly talented artists in Russia. I am not really sure about the politics but frankly I am supporting individual artists not protesting against their leaders. If anyone likes art I recommend you check out www.artfinder.com.

Stump up the tax, or just buy locally. Is not having the painting going to cause you a lot of trauma and distress? If it is, you’re very lucky that’s all you have to worry about. I think we can safely say that if you can afford to buy artwork at these sort of prices, paying out £140 extra in tax is not going to create too much hardship for you.

£3000 is not a fortune to spend on art quote of the day 😂

As for the various people saying “What’s wrong with our own British art then?” or “Buy British HTH,” I mean, what can you actually say to that? No wonder we are where we are.

How many of the items in your home were produced in Britain? Order these same things again and you might well get a shock.

It’s only been a few weeks so far. There was obviously a lot of talk about the impact of Brexit on business, but amidst all this, they’ve su far managed to keep the impact on the individual consumer very quiet.

You might not buy art, sure. But chances are you will buy something this year that happens to come from overseas and you will be stung in this way.

Having spoken (at length) with the company I bought this item through, they have told me that they are inundated with customers unwilling to pay surprise customs charges on top of the delivery charge they have already paid. Goods that would normally be in peoples homes are now sat on depots for 21 days before being returned to sender. The time and admin spent in this is one thing, but more than that, they are losing sales at an alarming rate. As one person there put it, “This is the real reality of Brexit for real people, day to day.” That’s what he said to me yesterday.

@Livelovebehappy

£3000 is not a fortune to spend on art quote of the day 😂

It's quote of the day if you only quote half of what I said .

How much would you think it reasonable to spend on a car? A holiday? Buying and looking after a pet? Having a child, or a second child? Getting a new kitchen? Kitting your family out with IPads or iPhones? All things which often cost more than £3000 but on which not everyone chooses to spend money.

You should ask for shipping DDP (Delivered Duty Paid). The sender will then prepay the customs/VAT/handling fees through the carrier. This is much cheaper than sorting it out when the package arrives in the UK, as the handling fees are often greater than the duty and it is cheaper for the carrier to collect charges when the waybill is booked than to be chasing the recipient/storing the item/processing a second payment. Pretty much all carriers will offer this.

I work in this area and we have made a decision to stop goods moving between EU and UK for a while as frankly it is chaos. Only DPD offer a DDP service from UK to EU at the moment and they are very backed up. The paperwork is onerous (far more so than to the rest of the world) and not helped by the fact that this is all new and seems to be unexpected by so many people.

It doesn't matter that the OP was buying art - everything is affected. Hopefully it will settle down in time, but right now it is not the low-friction system we enjoyed before.

In the EU, import tariffs are set by Brussels. Now we've left, they're set by the government. If you think that you should be able to import artworks for free, then lobby your MP.

It will change though. A few years on when both parties see what works or not things will be renegotiated.

I ‘ve just had my ranty husband banging on about Brexit and working visas killing his industry .He works in an industry previously known for its incredible overspends.His clients had more than enough money to suck up additional costs and the reason they used British companies previously still stands (ie British companies are the industry leads but the EU countries are used for its “scenery”).

Apparently his friends went to Spain for a job last week and the wives (free holiday) got turned away for not having visas. Obviously you are allowed to travel without a visa in the EU for up to 180 days.So clearly it was either a) you can’t currently can’t enter Spain unless it’s essential - ie working needing a visa or b) they hadn’t done a Covid test. He’s still adamant that it’s “wrong” and all the fault of Brexit.

Fgs, I don’t buy stuff I don’t want. If I’m looking to buy a specific item, I Google it and do the research. If I find what I am looking for, its irrelevant to me if it’s “British.” So if I’m looking for a rug, for instance - yes, there well may be a company here that has already imported from Morocco etc, but if not, I’ll just order it from Morocco, or wherever the case may be. It’s May a case of a higher delivery charge (maybe) or slower lead time - but you decide for yourself if you’re prepared to pay that. But never in my life have I experienced items being held at the depot. As HMRC told me yesterday, now, when you order from overseas, you just have to “hope for the best” as there’s no way of knowing what you will be charged additionally when it enters the country. This is HMRC telling me this. In his words “we are all learning now and the situation is ridiculous.” You are reliant on what the sender writes on the parcel label. If anything is amiss or not filled out properly, they will “estimate” at customs and you are liable to pay. You can’t challenge the amount until you have paid it. I have asked repeatedly if I will be charged at 70% of the value for other stuff coming in from Bulgaria, Israel etc and they have said they don’t know and I will just have to “wait and see, unfortunately - sorry.”

Ok. Let’s break this down - there’s quite a few things that someone buying goods overseas needs to be aware of...

Import duty and tax has always been applicable to goods coming to the UK from outside of the EU - your items from Russia, Israel etc are nothing to do with Brexit.

Firstly, you should’ve established your incoterms with the seller - these are rules that stipulate who is responsible for paying for the various elements in the transport chain - a quick google of incoterms 2020 will give you full information on these. Looking at the info you have provided, it sounds like this has been processed EXW - that puts all of the responsibility on you as the buyer to pick up the charges for everything.

Now the goods have arrived in the UK, let’s take a look at the clearance costs...

In order to calculate the duty and tax costs you need to have a look at the goods’ HS/commodity code in the UK customs tariff - as part of the Brexit agreement, the vast majority of items are zero rated for duty for importing from the EU, but duty rates will vary for other 3rd country locations.

VAT should be chargeable at standard rate from everywhere in the world - although some countries do have preferential rates, again, you need to refer to the UK’s customs tariff to check.

If you are VAT registered, then this is reclaimable from HMRC as part of your tax returns processes.

Import duty is calculated against your CIF cost, so it’s a percentage of the Cost of the goods, Insurance and your Freight costs - it is not just based upon the sale cost of the goods.

VAT is calculated on your CIFD value - all of the elements for CIF as above + any duty paid as well.

All of this information is available through a quick google search, or read of the .gov website.

The vast majority of customs hold ups are caused by people not doing basic research into what’s exactly involved. Unfortunately, there appears to be an element of this here - the fact is, these fees aren’t really negotiable as they are governed by the import tariff, and there’s no way around paying them.

Source: 15yrs in export and import industry.

Best of luck to you with future transactions - hopefully the above insight is helpful.

@laidbacklife

Russia has trade agreements in place with the EU and when we were part of the EU we benefitted from those agreements (although you would still have paid a customs duty as it’s not a free-trade agreement). Now we are no longer part of the EU we are trading with Russia on nothing more than WTO terms and this is why you are seeing this increase in customs tax. It is annoying, yes.

Excellent post.

Many items on Amazon and eBay have significantly increased in price. I presume it will be he same somewhere else as many items come from abroad.

Is this a stealth boast that you can happily afford 3k for some artwork? And you're moaning about having to pay some extra charges? You can clearly afford it OP so why are you getting mad?
YABU. Enjoy your artwork.

People concerned about bacon, just stop buying bacon. There’s no need.

I don't think you're listening AnitaB888, I do not think you are nasty, you described yourself as that. You did not read my post or the OP's and I don't know why you brought up recent US elections in your reply as that's not what we are discussing here. You describe how I voted when my post is about not having been allowed to vote at all.

You can vote how you like, of course, but many people could not as they were not allowed to vote, despite being UK citizens.
I happened to live and work in the EU, a right given to me by the UK.

People in my position should therefore not have been excluded from voting in the referendum. My point was, and is, that not everyone in the democracy was included.

I now live in the UK but some of my clients are EU. Now we pay duty on things we sell or buy from abroad and that smarts and we can't even be resigned and say that, "oh well, we did have a proper say at the time."

My father lives in France. He can no longer send presents to his grandchildren because of the risk of us being charged a ridiculous amount. Labelling items as gifts is not accepted.

I wanted to send him a photo of the children, the price to send it has shot up AND there are customs forms to fill in plus he will have to pay further unspecified charges when he receives it so we didn’t bother.

When we drive through France we usually take food for the journey plus enough for the next days breakfast as we arrive after the shops have shut but not allowed to take anything animal into France now (no dairy, no meat).

Thanks to Brexit, visiting my father is going to be very difficult.

My annual holiday budget was usually spent two thirds in the U.K. one third in France. As driving and self catering in France will now be difficult we will now be spending less in the U.K. as we may fly, hire a car and have a hotel either in France or further away.

I don't think you're listening AnitaB888, I do not think you are nasty, you described yourself as that. You did not read my post or the OP's and I don't know why you brought up recent US elections in your reply as that's not what we are discussing here. You describe how I voted when my post is about not having been allowed to vote at all. confused

Tbh, after reading the comments made by that poster, i dont think the issue was not reading

If she had posted that I had ordered a car or furniture or a kitchen, would that have been ok? What about clothes?

I only posted it was a (small) painting because I knew people would inevitably ask what it was and also, the salient point is, the order is not heavy or oversized or an unusual shape, nor something like food or perishables or anything customs might find unusual. It is a flat, light package.

If it encourages people to buy local, I think it’s actually a positive.

There are goods that don't have a local source or even on in the UK eg pacemakers.

Which cars are still manufactured in the 7
UK?

I dont know why there is a random 7 there

“If it encourages people to buy local, I think it’s actually a positive.”

So if I buy paintings at my local (London) art shops, where do you think that might have come from?

the over privileged on here can't see past the end of their nose, and feel desperately sorry for the poor OP, and the import tax on her artwork

I dont feel desperately sorry at all

But i can absolutely see how paying a lot more money than you were expecting would be a pain in the arse

And i can also see that the principal of having to pay more money than expected on £3000 is the same as for £1000 or £100 or £10