Shipping from EU to UK now brexit has happened

danlightbulb · 11 Oct 2021 at 19:29

Its very confusing trying to find information on what this now costs.

Im looking to buy an item from Poland which is worth about £300.

The Polish website that Im buying from displays their price including taxes, which I assume means the EU VAT rate.

But I would also get charged UK VAT on the import.

So shouldn't the Polish site show me the price without EU VAT for exporting outside the EU?

Also its confusing what the import duty is. Indications are its just a couple of percent but its not clear.

Anyone know?

MagicBoy · 11 Oct 2021 at 19:31

Assuming a business the local price should be without local VAT for orders shipped to the UK. UK VAT is paid at import. Import duty is determined by the item classification.

danlightbulb · 11 Oct 2021 at 19:33

MagicBoy said:
Assuming a business the local price should be without local VAT for orders shipped to the UK. UK VAT is paid at import. Import duty is determined by the item classification.

Right that's what I thought but the Polish site shows the price 'incl taxes' so I don't know how to buy the item sans-VAT.

MagicBoy · 11 Oct 2021 at 19:36

Send them an e-mail?

danlightbulb · 11 Oct 2021 at 19:39

Ok I can do, just thought this would happen automatically.

How do I find out the import tax?

Raymond Lin · 11 Oct 2021 at 19:40

20% VAT on (cost of item + shipping) + duty.

If they take their local tax off, then you won't add as much, if not, add roughly 25% of what is on the screen now and you are not far off.

Kenai · 11 Oct 2021 at 19:40

danlightbulb said:
Ok I can do, just thought this would happen automatically.

A lot of sellers / websites aren't very well set up for dealing with export sales automatically.

MagicBoy · 11 Oct 2021 at 19:40

danlightbulb said:
Ok I can do, just thought this would happen automatically.

How do I find out the import tax?

Automatically? Depends if they do enough business with the UK to make it worth recoding their website.

Taxes depend on the classification of the item, which the sender declares on the export documentation : https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty

Ironic Namesake · 11 Oct 2021 at 21:56

If they’re VAT registered in the UK, they can charge UK VAT and send the goods DDP. But most likely scenario is 20%+clearance fees when it arrives in UK.

Site probably isn’t set up properly to handle export taxes correctly.

wandgrudd · 12 Oct 2021 at 10:45

Right so have first-hand experience of this but from Germany last week, price shown was including German VAT, I emailed the site and was told in my case to check out as normal then send another email with the order number I then received a refund of the German VAT (this was all done with Paypal) parcel shipped from Germany arrived in the UK within 24 hours but then took 6 days for Parcelforce to send out the import / VAT claim latter, my item didn’t need any customs duty as it was zero rated but I had to pay the UK VAT and the standard £12 handling fee, this was all done on line and when paid was delivered the next day.

You can look up the Commodity codes on the link below which tells you what % you will need to pay for duty.

https://www.gov.uk/trade-tariff