Duty charges on competition prize

C00kie_2

Hello!

I was lucky enough to win (well, runner up) a photography competition back in Aug/Sep. The prizes only recently appeared around the 10th December in a big box from FedEx - and (this sounds ungrateful) not all of the listed prizes were included. Nevermind! I thought, it was nice to win, let alone get any prize!

Then on Christmas Eve I got an envelope from FedEx, inside was an invoice for the duty charges of £73.20 plus £10 admin fees!

I've no idea how to Google this for advice, I've emailed the US based company that ran the worldwide competition (it was international, with the winner/runners up from all areas of the world) asking for clarification about this - but where do I stand? If it's a prize, I assumed that would be like a gift and so not liable to me... but from a few browses of the net I note that others sending christmas gifts to family can end up with the recipient getting charged. I'm just baffled as to where I stand in all this. One of the prizes is a $100 gift card... which I was pretty much dismissing as whatever I buy would be liable for postage costs and its own duty charges which meant it wouldn't really make it anything other than just buying from the UK (well, I've not really checked but hey ho... assuming!)

Other browses have shown that other competitions mention in their T&C that the recipient is liable for any duty, there were no T&C like this with the photo comp other than about rights for the winning photo use.

Halp! I'm now looking at selling my prizes to cover the cost of receiving them :rolleyes:

Mikeyorks

C00kie wrote: »

If it's a prize, I assumed that would be like a gift and so not liable to me...

If it's from outside the EU then gifts aren't in any way exempt from import duty - if valued above £18.

You really have little choice but to pay - or decline the package :-

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/customs/post/buying.htm

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageImport_ShowContent&id=HMCE_PROD_009989&propertyType=document

TM1976

Part of the duty charge will be based on the value of the goods. The organisation may wish to overvalue the goods as they want to make it look like the prize is as big as possible, perhaps you should look at what you have recieved is valued at and dispute this with customs?

C00kie_2

Oh dratt - it's from the US and is over £18. I couldn't really decline the package as it arrived on the 10th December, and the invoice for the duty was on the 24th December.

ARrgghh.... those links are useful, but not helping me :rolleyes: not a gift as it's meant to be sent by an individual (it was a company) to an individual (me!) but....

Import VAT is payable if the value of the gift exceeds £36.

So much for being lucky for once! :rotfl: think I'll stick to not winning the lottery.