Info for UK Members who import frequently.

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Hi guys.

As we all know, import fees and duty when importing items into the UK is a joke. 15GBP limit before being taxed on goods and 38GBP limit before tax on gift items. What's more annoying than having to pay import tax though? Paying courier's Admin fees. I don't know about anybody else, but it absolutely grieves me to have to pay 8-15GBP for carrier fees on top of the VAT.

As some of you may already know, these fees are added by the carrier because they have paid the customs charges to HMRC, for the clearance of your parcel, so they may deliver it to you. You are not given any choice at this point to pay the charges directly to HMRC.

Anyway, the other day I was thinking, is there not any way that the import tax can be pre-paid to avoid having to pay further carrier charges when the item reaches the UK. So I did some googling and come across a post on another forum with a tip on how to avoid carrier fees and I thought you guys may be interested. Here is the post I found with a link to the original post below for those who are interested. I hope this helps some UK members here.

The post below is specific to parcelforce, but there is no reason that it wouldn't work with other carriers too.

It used to be that you could avoid the Parcelforce handling charge for clearing imported goods through customs by paying only the required duty and VAT, point blank refusing to pay the handling charge. In my experience, Parcelforce would back down and release your parcel because it was illegal for them to retain your items by way of a lien pending payment of their handling charges. Invariably they would say they would invoice you separately for the charge later, but again in my experience that never actually happened and there are several cases taken to the small claims court which have been lost by Parcelforce on the basis that the actual amount of the charges were opaque and unreasonable.

Well, it seems like that loophole in the postal services act has now been closed and Parcelforce is perfectly at liberty to retain your goods pending full payment of duty, VAT AND their handling charge.

So I was pleased to find another way to avoid the charge that is simplicity itself. You could ask the sender to charge you the VAT and duty directly, but that involves them registering with HMRC. Very unlikely to happen.

Much easier is to get the sender to write on the customs declaration "Goods to be Customs cleared by the importer" . No handling charge will be payable and you will receive an invoice for customs that you have to pay directly. It will delay things slightly, but probably no more than the way Parcelforce send you a letter normal post with website link to pay duty plus their handling fee, then promising to deliver within a further 5 working days. If you really want to be belt and braces, ask the sender to take a quick pic of the labelled up parcel and declaration with their mobile phone, just in case Parcelforce decide to ignore the instructions (wouldn't be the first time) and try and charge you anyway. You can always ask the sender to email the pic to you if it proves necessary.

So save yourself 8GBP or 13.50GBP and deal with HMRC directly yourself.

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