Any other Etsy sellers confused about or giving up selling to the US?

[EverardDeTroyes]

I've just read all the info provided by Etsy on the tariffs for goods sold to the US. I'm not entirely clear if my products are affected, but I have come to the conclusion, reluctantly, that I can't jump through all the hoops anymore. I always ship using Royal Mail because it is the most convenient for me. I am not really a business, just a small time crafter and I wouldn't know how to go about setting up accounts and calculating costs with DHL or UPS (the carriers Etsy recommends using). Even though the US makes up half my market, I have decided to only sell to the UK for the time being. Am I being rash? Can any other Etsy sellers convince me otherwise?

Not an Etsy seller but I’m a crafter and I’ve seen some craft sites stop selling to the US. They don’t expect people to pay the import taxes to USPS or DHL and the also don’t expect them to pay for taxes at checkout either.

I think if larger companies aren’t taking the risk of exporting to the US, I think small Etsy sellers are perfectly sensible to not do so either. I know it’s 50% of your sales but honestly I think you could end up losing money if you don’t calculate taxes properly. I think if you added them at checkout you would also see a reduction in sales anyway because nobody is prepared to pay it.

The article on BBC website says Royal mail hope to have their new systems in place within days so we are keeping our fingers crossed.

The US is a big bit of our market. Always seemed mad to me, they pay more in postage than they pay for some of our items! (Paying £8 for an item plus £10 postage!)

Yes, my 'business' is very much the same. I will keep an eye out for Royal Mail changes but as of now I am just selling to the UK. I still don't understand how we will know how much duty has to be paid. Will that be worked out for us when buying the postage and added to the cost?

Its worked out for other countries. I know one of my parcels for dispatch this week to Canada needs the "Tax paid" marking on the box.

Apparently for us, its really expensive to get the materials in the US hence its cheaper to buy from European sellers. (Which will get worse, as the materials come from China...)

Main worry at the moment is the outstanding US orders. We make to order, so have a 3 week dispatch time. If we can't dispatch, what do we do? Will Eysy penalise us, will customers understand its their government's fault, not ours...