Focalplane
Western Thunderer
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The title of this thread should probably read Recent Changes in Mailing and Shipping to and from the EU
I am not well pleased! It seems that some people have been ripped off by the confusion of buying and shipping items between the EU and the UK and vice versa. To give some examples I am aware of:
A good friend here in France needed some parts shipped out from the UK for his V12 Lagonda rebuild. Before the end of 2020 he placed an order worth several hundred pounds, paying the VAT as he believed the parcel would arrive before year end. It didn't, so he was charged a second 20% TVA and, wait for it, a handling fee to "do the paperwork".
Similar stories abound from that time. But in early 2021 BREXIT had now been fully introduced to an unknowing* public and for a while almost no transactions took place. It seemed that much depended on the policies of various sellers on both sides of the "treaty". Certainly one path that we have followed is to buy an item tax free in the UK have it shipped and then pay French TVA plus a small handling fee before the package will be delivered.
Amazon, being the international juggernaut it is, seems to be able to get around this and I feel sure other well established large companies can do the same. But what of small companies who have few overseas clients? Not so fast! I understand that different sets of documentation exist, depending on the value of the transaction. I have not found much to confirm this but £150 seems to be a threshold below which it is not worth the effort to do business selling to Europe.
In my infinite stupidity I had assumed that BREXIT might mean that the Lee Marsh Castle I have ordered could be paid for without VAT (Lee uses the Scottish word "outwith" on his site). I now seriously doubt this can happen, even though the Castle will be shipped to France and will run on my layout here.
Have others had similar experiences?
Paul
*Some may challenge this and governments will always say that we were forewarned. But when where and how? To give an old example, when we lived in Texas, we were fined for not having re-taxed or SORNed our UK registered car. When we complained we were told that SORN had been advertised on TV - but only in the U.K. of course - so we had to pay the fine.
The title of this thread should probably read Recent Changes in Mailing and Shipping to and from the EU
I am not well pleased! It seems that some people have been ripped off by the confusion of buying and shipping items between the EU and the UK and vice versa. To give some examples I am aware of:
A good friend here in France needed some parts shipped out from the UK for his V12 Lagonda rebuild. Before the end of 2020 he placed an order worth several hundred pounds, paying the VAT as he believed the parcel would arrive before year end. It didn't, so he was charged a second 20% TVA and, wait for it, a handling fee to "do the paperwork".
Similar stories abound from that time. But in early 2021 BREXIT had now been fully introduced to an unknowing* public and for a while almost no transactions took place. It seemed that much depended on the policies of various sellers on both sides of the "treaty". Certainly one path that we have followed is to buy an item tax free in the UK have it shipped and then pay French TVA plus a small handling fee before the package will be delivered.
Amazon, being the international juggernaut it is, seems to be able to get around this and I feel sure other well established large companies can do the same. But what of small companies who have few overseas clients? Not so fast! I understand that different sets of documentation exist, depending on the value of the transaction. I have not found much to confirm this but £150 seems to be a threshold below which it is not worth the effort to do business selling to Europe.
In my infinite stupidity I had assumed that BREXIT might mean that the Lee Marsh Castle I have ordered could be paid for without VAT (Lee uses the Scottish word "outwith" on his site). I now seriously doubt this can happen, even though the Castle will be shipped to France and will run on my layout here.
Have others had similar experiences?
Paul
*Some may challenge this and governments will always say that we were forewarned. But when where and how? To give an old example, when we lived in Texas, we were fined for not having re-taxed or SORNed our UK registered car. When we complained we were told that SORN had been advertised on TV - but only in the U.K. of course - so we had to pay the fine.
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