As of 1st Jan 2021 there will be no £15 limit on duty free imports, VATS will have to be PREPAID by the seller up to £135! To sell to the UK you need to register for a GB Economic Operator Registration and Identification (EORI) number before shipping your goods. You have to ensure you calculate the correct amount according to the HS Tariff Code etc.
It looks to only affect businesses or ‘sellers’ on marketplaces. I thought the recent changes to the Aussie import scheme was bad this is crazy lol. Can any UKians shed more light into this? Are you going to move to France?
If this is true it seems like a very poor way of handling the situation.
I feel bad for UK buyers trying to convince sellers to jump through extra hoops for them
That seems to be exactly what it’s going to be like. 20% fee from any marketplace, that the seller will push towards the buyer. I don’t actually think much changes, except that we have to pay more — I could be wrong, but that’s how I’m reading it. Anything over £135 nothing changes, as already mentioned.
Well considering this is illegal I think it’s a good thing. Import duties suck, but avoiding them is fraud.
Any buyer who asks for lower declared value and any seller who declares at a lower value is putting themselves at massive risk of police investigation. All you’d have to do as a buyer/seller in that situation is report the seller/buyer who did this and they’d be in a whole load of trouble. Most countries take this very seriously, so you’d very likely end up audited and heaven forbid they discover that you’ve been not paying (as a buyer) or not accurately declaring (as a seller).
That sounds really crazy and it would be nice to have some clarification…
Is this also a rip for UK based PSA middle man services? If there’s no trade agreement made, EU customers will have to pay customs for packages coming from the UK. That’s a big F.
I believe so, but I’m pretty sure Ludkins are opening a base in Paris for their EU clients. Not sure how GradedGem is going to deal with it, although I’m sure they’ve got something in place as well. That being said it’s hard to imagine this would change a lot, the wording is pretty unclear like you said.
Just to add that this is all technically still provisional at this stage - UK-EU negotiations are still ongoing, as are negotiations for free trade agreements (FTA) with a number of other countries (although Japan has already signed a FTA with the UK!).
I imagine postal services are just reverting to a ROW-style default until details are known (which to be fair might be a few months into 2021).
I am a registered business in the UK, have an EORI number and have been pre-paying VAT for the past 2 years. From what I can see it’s just the threshold value that changed. Any business importing large amounts from countries outside the EU already needed to do this in order to clear goods.
This may affect smaller businesses and businesses who only dealt with the EU, but for the rest of us it won’t be much different as far as I can see.
