my friend sent me a gift worth $70, i was charged £33 customs advice please.

jrrowleyws

If it was a lost earring then why on earth was the value declared to be $77? Gift or not, lost item or not, thats seen as a $77 import and will be taxed accordingly.

Would probabily be cheaper to refuse it and resend with a value of ~$20 as I cant see how one earring costs $77 as on its own its pretty useless!

TurkishDelight

Just a little note- you may want to be careful with the parcelforce representative.

You may be talking to parcelforce, but you may be giving information about a valuable item to a randomer on the internet.
They aren't on the list anyway. http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=781221

flea72

the postal handling companies in this country dont just pluck fees out of thin air, they have a set fee structure

parcelforce £8 handling fee
UPS £13

but back to the OP, depending on the composition of the earring it might fall into different duty rates, but as a rule jewellery would be 2.5%

so an earring costing $70 would be charged at a duty rate of 2.5% (we'll assume local tax and p&p is included in the $70) $70 = roughly £46 x 2.5% = £1.15 in duty £46+£1.15 = £47.17 x 17.5% = £8.25 VAT meaning you should owe HMRC £9.40

which is nowhere near the £25 you quote - so the only assumption can be, that the value of the item declared was more than $70, or once looked at by HMRC they viewed it to be worth more

im not trying to be pick holes in your case, just pointing out that something has gone awry in the system for yourself, and unless we know the full facts about the item, who sent it, how it was sent, and why you are disputing the fees, we cannot help

F

lewt

if it was a gift from a friend then why are you posting on the ebay board and not the tax board?

blaque*angel

didn't know there was a tax board! lol

thanks for the advice folks..

lewt

blaque*angel wrote: »

didn't know there was a tax board! lol

thanks for the advice folks..

Aint hard to find... last place i would look is the ebay and selling/buying board if you want people to buy your story.


ask the company to write costume jewarly on next time

martindow

lewt wrote: »

if it was a gift from a friend then why are you posting on the ebay board and not the tax board?

I don't think it is unreasonable to post here. A lot of threads on the Ebay board are related to postage issues and there is expertise and experience from people who post here.

OP - is it possible that the sender wrote the value with a dollar sign which has been mistaken for a figure? So it has gone through at 177 dollars.

25 pounds VAT is paid on a value 142 pounds which could be about right if you add on postage costs.

trukdiver

If it was sent via USPS, the Post Office collects the VAT on behalf of Customs. For merchandise they charge VAT if it cost £18 or more and for gifts, if it's worth more than £36. They use the value declared on the customs label, NOT the insured value. The insurance value takes into account what it would cost to replace the item, not what you may have paid for it. On one occasion, I was charged on the insurance value. I argued about it with Customs and was given a full refund of the VAT - but not the PO charge.

I've had varying amounts charged by the PO for their clearance fee (they didn't seem very consistent), but I've only been charged VAT on postage once.

jamesbrownontheroad wrote: »

Blaque*angel ... you can bang your head against a wall, or you bang you head against the people in this forum who might be able to help you. Doing neither will help.

We are in the exact same situation. My partner is American, and every couple of months her parents send us a 'care package' with keepsakes, clothes, wild rice etc from their home in northern Minnesota. This morning Parcelforce sent us a similar letter, advising us we'd need to pay £42.64 VAT and £13.50 in clearance fees on the most recent parcel.

It sucks to high heaven because my girlfriend's family is not wealthy, and they save for several months just to put these parcels together and to pay the pretty uncompetitive USPS shipping rates (there isn't much choice for shipping carriers in their part of northern MN).

VAT is charged at 17.5% on all imports, and for the purpose of HM Revenue & Customs that value includes the postage. You need to understand that the advice given above: there is no such thing as a gift in terms of customs. The VAT will normally be calculated on the declared insurance value of the package on the shipping label (in our case. £42.64 is 17.5% of £243.66, which would suggest my partner's mom wrote a declared value of $400 on the shipping label).

The Parcelforce Clearance Fee is another matter entirely. They can charge whatever they like for this part, although if you Google "Parcelforce HMRC" you might find some other forums where people have successfully claimed this back retrospectively or, intriguingly, only paid Parcelforce for the VAT charges and still had the parcel delivered.

You have three options.

1) Do nothing. The parcel will be returned to sender in about four to six weeks. Or it might be disposed of. Who knows.

2) Write to the following address, requesting that the parcel is recalled to HMRC and re-assessed for value: include as much documentary evidence of the value of the item in the parcel as you can. If your friend in the US still has the receipt, ask her to scan it and email it to you.

UK Border Agency
International Postal Hub
Sisken Parkway West
Coventry
CV3 4HX

3) Pay the charges, have the parcel delivered and then attempt to reclaim the money by writing to that address, including the same documentary evidence and all available labels from the outside of the parcel to help identify it.

For more information on these processes, speak to HMRC Customs directly 0845 010 9000 (or non-0845 on 029 2050 1261) and choose option 4.

PS. If the Parcelforce employee who Blaque*angel has said messaged her privately would be so kind as to contact me in a similar manner, I'd be grateful for any further advice / comments on our situation, although I appreciate there is only so much anyone can do in this situation. Thanks in advance.

custardy

trukdiver wrote: »

If it was sent via USPS, the Post Office collects the VAT on behalf of Customs. For merchandise they charge VAT if it cost £18 or more and for gifts, if it's worth more than £36. They use the value declared on the customs label, NOT the insured value. The insurance value takes into account what it would cost to replace the item, not what you may have paid for it. On one occasion, I was charged on the insurance value. I argued about it with Customs and was given a full refund of the VAT - but not the PO charge.

I've had varying amounts charged by the PO for their clearance fee (they didn't seem very consistent), but I've only been charged VAT on postage once.

RM charge a flat rate clearence fee
PF charge 2 different set fee's
so i dont know where the inconsistency is?

tux900

There seems to be a lot of well intended but incorrect advice on this issue. I suggest the OP gets the info she requires direct from the horses mouth:

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageImport_ShowContent&propertyType=document&id=HMCE_CL_000014

Mathew