P&P costs from Hong Kong?

fatboyonadiet

I'm looking to buy a Secure Digital Memory card and seen some on eBay which tend to go for a fairly reasonable rate, the ones from Japan or Hong Kong tend to go for less but what I was wondering is will I get charged VAT or any other charges customs will try to do me for?

Cheers

biblejohn

From memory it depends on the value of the item. Your allowed something like 15quid or 30quid (?) in value. Any more than that you will be taxed. Worth checking the customs & excise website and see what the allowance is.

fatboyonadiet

Cheers, found this which might be useful:

If you purchase goods through the Internet you should be aware that Customs duty and VAT will be payable, as follows:

Customs duty - if the amount of duty is £7 and over and
Import VAT - if the value of the goods is £18 and over.

Let's hope I can bag a bargain then!

biblejohn

fatboyonadiet wrote:

Cheers, found this which might be useful:

If you purchase goods through the Internet you should be aware that Customs duty and VAT will be payable, as follows:

Customs duty - if the amount of duty is £7 and over and
Import VAT - if the value of the goods is £18 and over.

Let's hope I can bag a bargain then!

Yep thats right. I bought an item from the states once thinking id save myself 40quid on what the same item would cost in the UK. As it was, i got hit for customs duty, vat & royal mails collection fee`s. And the item ended up costing me £40 **more** than what i could have bought it for in the uk.

Hintza

to be honest memory looks like a normal envelope when posted soprobably wouldn't get caught anyway.

£18 is the VAT limit you will find a lot of these guys keep their prices below £18 and charge you a fortune in postage so as to comply (cough!!) with the rules. Check out MP3 players and the like.

jma_4

You could always ask the seller to mark it down or as a gift.

alanrowell

You could always ask the seller to mark it down or as a gift.

Which is illegal & if caught Customs will make you pay the duty AND watch out for other stuff from that supplier.

Bargainbabe_2

In my experience, most International eBay sellers mark low price items has a gift anyway.

chillipepper_3

alanrowell wrote:

Which is illegal & if caught Customs will make you pay the duty AND watch out for other stuff from that supplier.

To be quite honest with you here if it is marked as a gift and the value is pretty low customs will hardly ever question it. I have purchased an XD card for my camera from hong kong via Ebay and paid no duty. I have only paid duty on one item which was an expensive watch from a jewellers in LA, just received 4 items this month from the states,(one item $55) all shoe box size parcels and paid no duty. Its a risk, and illegal but so is doing +70mph on a motorway. (I say live a little!, but don 't condone speeding!!ofcourse)
With the amount of goods coming and going I would be very suprised if customs have got the resources or budget to track suppliers unless ofcourse they were major suppliers and had a bad track record for dodging duty/tax.