Import duty

Hollysaveexpert

Hi I am new to this forum so I hope this post is in the right place, I imported some fly screens from Italy earlier in the year, and about a month or so later I received an invoice from FedEx for the sum of £107 import duty, I didn’t know I had to pay this but apparently some countries are liable for it it’s probably Brexit, but FedEx paid this without my knowledge or consent and have the cheek to add a percentage on for doing so, so far I haven’t paid it due to a problem with my invoice number and their website, they never answer their phones and it’s like hitting your head on a brick wall getting a straight answer from their customer services. Any advice or comments would be appreciated. Thanks ,Holly 

pogofish

This this is the wrong place!

Why didn’t you do your own import paperwork? That is the moneysaving option and would have avoided the fee and limited you to just any duty actually payable, although maybe at the expense of slower delivery.

The chapter and verse on how to do this has been on here in an appropriate forum for years now.

Also, IME FedEx are amongst the worst for hitting you with these fees - This may not be unconnected with them (last time I looked) holding the contract for handling items for customs processing.

Hollysaveexpert

Hi thanks for your comment, I suppose when ordering things from a website and it says including postage I just assumed that was it, to receive an invoice well over a month after delivery asking for import duty that has been paid for you just didn’t seem right, I can’t see many people having a clue whether import duty was payable or not. 

Sandtree

Hollysaveexpert said:

Hi thanks for your comment, I suppose when ordering things from a website and it says including postage I just assumed that was it, to receive an invoice well over a month after delivery asking for import duty that has been paid for you just didn’t seem right, I can’t see many people having a clue whether import duty was payable or not. 

It has always been the importers responsibility to know about the taxes they will have to pay to bring goods into their own country. Its fairly unrealistic to expect a retailer to have in-depth knowledge of all 195 or so countries in the world's tax laws and even more unrealistic when you remember some countries, eg USA, the rules vary by state.

The problem is that the internet has now made it much easier for John Average to buy something directly from a factory in China than it was 25 years ago. I'm fairly sure we briefly touched on these things when I was in school in the 90s but probably not many paid attention in school or thought it would be relevant to them.  

There was reasonable press coverage of the whole topic at the end of last year due to Brexit and the changes in VAT that were brought in but this is boring stuff that people don't read in the papers or were distracted by Xmas or looming lockdown 3 etc.

I got caught out buying CDs  from the USA and have learned ever since. You've a bit more of an expensive experience but will also know for the future... be thankfully you weren't the person that bought several cases of cheap wine, putting them in separate orders to keep under the £135 limit but not realising that excise on wine has no lower limit and VAT is chargable on the total cost including excise and so each case was now well over the £135 limit... wasn't very cheap wine in the end.