Import vat on presents from USA

[olliepolly]

surprised my brothers christmas parcel had not arrived as similar parcels to Scotland and Ireland had.Turns out it was held up in customs and today had letter from parcel force saying had to pay £46.66 for parcel to be delivered!
Anybody else had this? It seems a real damper on Christmas for families separated by distance.Am I correct that if they had sent separate parcels to individual family members that it could have been below threshold and avoided duty altogether?

Import duty and VAT is applied on gifts if they are sent from outside the EU. The gift allowance used to be £35, nit sure what it is now. The duty is calculated on the cost of the gift, plus whatever it cost to post it. The VAt is then applied on top of that. If you go to the hmrc website it explains it all in more detail.

not sure what it is now.

It will depend on how they worded the customs form and the value they gave the gifts.

But yes, if they'd posted individually they probably woulnd't have been charged unless the items were expensive.

We had a similar experience with something we bought from ebay. I had never bought from outside eu before so didn't realise there would VAT etc to pay when it arrived. Was mightly miffed and let the company know who did refund us some of the cost which I was pleased about.

There was a threshold of a fairly small amount before you had to pay so I guess with a family worth of prezzies it is going to cost :(

Did the person who sent it know you would have to pay? It is a dampner to have to pay in effect for your own prezzies :(

I feel your pain. We recently had two parcels sent from USA and had to pay £36 pound on each parcel to get it delivered.

There are many rules relating to receiving parcels as gifts from abroad:

1 customs label has to marked multi recipient (however there is no space on USA custom label for this)

2 each present inside must be wrapped
And labelled for person meant for (cannot just be unwrapped in box together)

3 the value of gifts for person must be less than £45 in total

4 you can receive up to five gifts for five individual people with no inport vat however if you have further gives beyond five you will be charges vat on them

5 you will be charged a handling fee by parcel force

6 you can try and claim the vat back if you think you have been charged wrong (which I have submitted but not heard back from).

Hope that helps