Online-Shopping post-Brexit Tips/Experiences

It’s not the EU collecting it’s the destination country and it’s the VAT they are collecting so differing from each country. I’m located in Denmark and people are slowly stopping ordering things from diverse UK shops because they surprise surprise get hit with the extra cost. Not just the VAT but also the import fee which it is up to the delivering courier what estimates to. The Danish postal service have an import fee of roughly 22 euro for example which has to be paid on top of the VAT. Shops like the British Amazon do seem to be finally able to get this right and just make the customer pay the domestic VAT up front but other shops? Good luck :slight_smile:

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Not so much confusing as incorrect.

As Avatar says, it’s not an EU tariff, it’s VAT. This applies both ways - UK to EU and vice versa.

UK purchases from Europe incur our 20% VAT charge, plus any admin fee at point of sale. EU purchases from the UK may incur the VAT charge at point of sale or upon arrival.

Thanks for sharing that. Denmark is in the EU, and Denmark has tariffs because the EU wouldn’t agree no tariffs with UK.
Do you get charged tariffs every time? Or is it just the luck of the draw?
In the UK it is the luck of the draw.
I bought THE ALAMO and MAJOR DUNDEE Blurays from Amazon Germany this month and paid no tariffs on either.

Last year I bought IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE through Amazon UK. But Amazon UK was acting as a middleman; the Bluray was being supplied from an outfit in Pennsylvania. The luck of the draw was that it was hiked off the conveyor belt in the UK and slapped with duty, which I was asked to pay at the local British Post Office.
The BluRay cost £15, and they wanted £15 duty. When I realised which package it was, I denied ordering it and left them holding it. I may chase up a refund one day.
This year I bought HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD from Amazon UK, and I read the small print too late; it was coming from the same Pennsylvania outfit. Fortunately, it progressed along the conveyor belt unharmed, and I paid NO TARIFF.

The only other time that I was hit with an import tariff before IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE was for a VHS before DVD was invented. Maybe I’mm just lucky.

Incidentally, the tariff that is charged on imports is VAT. VAT goes into the EU coffers. Look it up. Try and find the answer on the internet, and you’ll realise they don’t want you to know that.

Can we start a new tariff thread so that people can explain how things work in their own countries? I find this fascinating.

VAT goes to the country you’re in not the EU. It has got nothing to do the with the EU. The Danish VAT rate has been set by the Danish government and hence they collect it. Denmark has got one of the highest (the highest I think actually along with a couple of other countries) VAT rates and it’s been 25% for an eternity. Not everything has been caught but believe me I’ve had tons of import fee bills mostly from the US. There was a value threshold you had to be over before import fee and VAT had to be paid but that was removed this 1st of July so now everything is potentially a victim. It’s not worth the risk. I know the Danish postal service is recruiting tons of people at the moment just to be able to handle this extra work. There should be an automatic system in place that just caught everything that came into the country but that is not up and running. That should also eliminate the import fee which would be great but until that is up and running ordering anything from the US, UK, China or the like is just too big a risk.

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Your sentence is incorrect. You need to insert the word “may”.

UK purchases from Europe MAY incur our 20% VAT charge.

I buy regularly from Amazon.de. No tariffs yet.

The EU sets the broad VAT rules through European VAT Directives, and has set the minimum standard VAT rate at 15%. The 27 member states are otherwise free to set their standard VAT rates.

VAT does go to the EU, because you are a member state of the EU, a vassal state.
Denmark paid 1,468 million Euros to be in the EU in 2018. And the EU creams off VAT too.

You’d be better off in the UK. I bought 8 BluRays from Germany this year. NO TARIFFS.
Three from France. NO TARIFFS.
Two from Spain. NO TARIFFS

Your sentence is incorrect. You need to insert the word “may”.

UK purchases from Europe MAY incur our 20% VAT charge.

I buy regularly from Amazon.de. No tariffs yet.

VAT goes to the country itself. I pay 25% VAT of everything I buy in Denmark. You are simply incorrect sorry.

European Amazons have always charged VAT up front also before Brexit so I have always paid 25% VAT for anything bought from any of them as you pay British VAT through them now.

If you buy anything from a EU-country today outside Amazon and don’t pay your local VAT you are cheating your own country of it’s VAT and potentially paying VAT to the country you purchase the item from.

And Denmark did pay a lot to the EU but I seem to remember that we got more money out of it than we paid so a good deal I guess :slight_smile: And no the EU doesn’t touch the Danish VAT.

End of rant for me.

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The Uk paid 9000 million. Now we don’t.
Vat added to goods is already added to the product when it is displayed on Amazon.de, whether I buy it or you buy it. When I agree to buy, I get a small additional postage and packing charge. There is no tariff. Any import tariff would be charged in the UK by the UK. It rarely happens.
Do keep up.

“All glory is fleeting”

I don’t want to feed the fire but I do wish we could keep politics out of the discussions here. There are some of us who voted to leave the EU. We had our own reasons for doing so and made an informed choice based on what we felt would be the best for the country in long run. I could accuse those who voted to remain of being ignorant but that would be wrong. They had their own reasons. You have no regrets for the decision you made and I don’t have any, either.

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While I have made it transparent that I disagree here on the substance, I agree with keeping that out of the discussion about the practicality of importing. That goes for @IndioBlack just the same though. If we can agree on discussing these things on a technical level, all these “vasall state” and “dictatorship” remarks would therefore also be out of place.

I could split these things off into a topic titled “Online-Shopping post-Brexit Tips/Experiences” or something, would that be OK for everyone?

I agree entirely! This is, after all, a post where people are supposed to be able to share their new purchases. If people want to discuss Brexit that is fine, but maybe they could start a separate post and leave this one for people who want to discuss SWs.

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Exactly. Remainers accuse Brexiteers of ignorance, stupidity, swallowing lies, being senile. They call us Brexitards, Brexshitters. They even circulated a letter saying that the result was obviously a mistake because people didn’t know what they were voting for, so let’s call for another Referendum.
And that’s why I was rankled when Sebastian said “Brexit stinks” and Piripero was coming out with his accusations of ignorance. Because that’s something I will not let stand.

This thread is specifically for online shopping tips and experiences post-Brexit, hence the thread title. What it’s NOT for is a political slanging match between people with entrenched positions on a deeply polarising subject. We’ve had a tentative stab at political debate before and it crashed and burned almost immediately, because most of the members here want to escape that shit here at the SWDB. And those members have maybe got a point.

If the thrust of this thread is going to become nought but a bunch of mudslinging and generalisation which won’t alter one single persons’ views either way - in fact will likely only serve to entrench people further - I’m going to delete those posts and, if that doesn’t work, I’ll simply lock the thread altogether.

Once more: This thread is for online shopping tips and experiences post-Brexit. And that’s it.

Thank-you, gentlemen.

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