FedEx parcel unexpected bilk

Haggoj723

Hello

I received a Xmas gift from my friend in Spain who sent me a parcel via his company.  He said the gift was worth €20, it was some cheese, chorizo and a couple if bottles of cheap plonk.

I've just received a bill from FedEx to the tune of £190.18.  The breakdown is as follows;

£174.88 VAT TYPE I
£12.75 DPF Deferrment proc. fee
£2.55 VAT (on the DPF)

On the bumf, it looks like they've assumed it's "Machine Parts"!

How can I appeal this?

user1977

What was it declared as on the parcel?

Phantom151

You can try contacting Fedex to dispute but the sender may have to challenge it. You will need him to send a copy of the commercial invoice to be able to challenge it. Something has gone wrong onthe Fedex side of things as they seem to have the value of the shipment down as about £3500!

Haggoj723

It was declared as Scale Modelling Supplies as that's his company's business.  It probably wasn't far off €20!

I don't have a commercial invoice as it was a gift.

Phantom151

A commercial invoice isn't an invoice as you know it. It is generated by the sender when sending any goods internationally (also called a EUR01). All the goods will be itemised with values but should be declared as a gift instead of a commercial transaction. Fedex will have a copy of this as they need this to do the customs entry so ask them for it. Sounds like there has been a paperwork mix up as there is no duty listed to pay (plenty of things are zero duty but wine isn't one of them!)

There is definitely something wrong as food and drink are a totally different tariff code to machine parts (I won't bore you with the details).

It does occur to me that the colletction driver could've mixed up the paperwork that gets submitted (they take a copy of the invoice which then gets submitted to the export team). You really need to get a copy of the one Fedex have used as well as the one that the sender generated for your gift. It will probably need the sender to get Fedex to rectify as I don't think they'll take your word for it as they may think you are just trying to avoid taxes.

jon81uk

Haggoj723 said:

It was declared as Scale Modelling Supplies as that's his company's business.  It probably wasn't far off €20!

I don't have a commercial invoice as it was a gift.

It wasn't modelling supplies though it is a gift cheese and wine.
There would still need to be a form/invoice to show customs the value of the goods and that they are a gift.

Its possible HMRC opened the box and valued it because what is contained within wasn't what the label stated it was.

The amount of tax till doesn't look correct, but you would have to pay excise duty on wine even received as a gift.
Tax and customs for goods sent from abroad: Tax and duty - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
You may need to pay FedEx and then reclaim the overpaid duty from HMRC.

Manxman_in_exile

Is the problem that your friend didn't declare the items correctly?  If he was sending you a gift of food and drink, why did he say it was Scale Model Supplies?  Is it to do with sending "via his company"?

(Not trying to be funny, but if he didn't declare the items correctly I can imagine all manner of things could have gone wrong... )

Phantom151

jon81uk said:

Haggoj723 said:

It was declared as Scale Modelling Supplies as that's his company's business.  It probably wasn't far off €20!

I don't have a commercial invoice as it was a gift.

Its possible HMRC opened the box and valued it because what is contained within wasn't what the label stated it was.

The amount of tax till doesn't look correct, but you would have to pay excise duty on wine even received as a gift.
Tax and customs for goods sent from abroad: Tax and duty - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
You may need to pay FedEx and then reclaim the overpaid duty from HMRC.

HMRC wouldn't be anywhere near the shipment and if Fedex had decided to check then there would be a duty charge as well as the VAT charge.

Phantom151

Manxman_in_exile said:

Is the problem that your friend didn't declare the items correctly?  If he was sending you a gift of food and drink, why did he say it was Scale Model Supplies?  Is it to do with sending "via his company"?

(Not trying to be funny, but if he didn't declare the items correctly I can imagine all manner of things could have gone wrong... )

This is why I'm thinking there is an invoice mixup (thinking more than one international shipment and then getting the invoices on the wrong parcel after all, the VAT charge suggests an invoice of about 4k) . There is no reason not to be mostly honest with customs paperwork. You can play silly buggers with value to a degree but to declare an obviously false description would be daft.

Manxman_in_exile

Phantom151 said:

Manxman_in_exile said:

Is the problem that your friend didn't declare the items correctly?  If he was sending you a gift of food and drink, why did he say it was Scale Model Supplies?  Is it to do with sending "via his company"?

(Not trying to be funny, but if he didn't declare the items correctly I can imagine all manner of things could have gone wrong... )

... There is no reason not to be mostly honest with customs paperwork. You can play silly buggers with value to a degree but to declare an obviously false description would be daft.

That's what I thought - but didn't like to say in so many (or so few) words...  

Sandtree

Haggoj723 said:

It was declared as Scale Modelling Supplies as that's his company's business.  It probably wasn't far off €20!

I don't have a commercial invoice as it was a gift.

As it was sent by a company it will not be considered legally a gift for avoiding taxes

€20 is the price these items would be sold at (either B2B or B2C) by the company or is how much it'd have cost them to buy them? 

What was actually on the customs declaration exactly?

The obvious issue here is that you have alcohol in the parcel which means it'll always attract excise duty and so £2.68 per bottle in excise duty and related VAT plus then VAT on the value of the bottle - a recent thread on here had someone importing a few cases of cheap wine that didnt appear so cheap after all the taxes were added!