Importing from USA advice

[sarahken]

My auntie is curently living in the USA- near New York and picks up fantastic kids designer clothes for peanuts at the TJ Maxx stores they have out there. She is home at the moment and wants me to start selling with her on ebay. She wants to bring the clothes in, in her luggage or friends luggage every time she visits but I have said to her this will inccur VAT as it will need to be declared plus I do not want to have to go to all the trouble of registering self employed. My dh use to sell on ebay and hmrc still hound him to fill out self assessments and chase him for money his employers have failed to tax him even though he hasn't been self employed for 4 years and I inform them every year.

I would want to do everything properly as I'm too afraid of conning the tax man. Does anybody else import and sell on ebay and have any advice on how to do it effectively and still make money. The only thing I can think of is her registering her own ebay account and paypal account and doing it herself but she wants me involved- but how to do this I haven't figured out yet. Any advice would be grately appreciated.

You forgot about customs duty, too; you don't just pay VAT. First you pay customs (12%?) THEN you pay another 17.5% on the new total. So that's a 30-40% more than the NYC TK-MAXX price.

There's a good Ebay thread here, but that's 2007 so things have changed (bit more up-to-date here). Basically, I think your aunt's idea is uneconomical if you want to do it legitimately.

thanks for that- had a good look at the HMRC website last night. In my opinion it wouldn't be worth doing legimately- and I'm not going to risk doing it any other way.

Only thing I can think of is me listing it for her and doing all the ebay work for her as she's not very good woth computers and she posts the items to the buyers from the USA as there wouldn't be any customs duty this way as all items would be under £36. Am I right in thinking I then wouldnt have to pay the VAT and customs duty?

Your second idea is doable, although I think the UK import duty threshold on purchased goods is even lower (18 quid?). The duty is paid by the buyer, btw, not you. So success in this business idea really depends on them not being savvy enough to know those big charges might apply -- or them not minding. You could advise that you are not responsible for import or similar fees that might be imposed.

Your aunt would have to be handy with a digital camera! And happy to go to Post Office herself, and good at packaging stuff up.

(Sorry to rain on your parade)

Oh and also if you don't charge insured postage (expensive) their is no come back if "it goes missing" seems like a lot of hassle to me