ebay sale via Royal Mail - Europe vs Australia vs US

Jerry_Cornelius

So i've been doing any European sales using Royal Mail Online whereby you can select Sale Of Goods in the options and add the ebay order number and whatever, so the printed label has the IOSS info, and this indcates the sales tax has already been paid and the reciptent won't get charged import fees. I recently had a sale to Australia, my first in a long time, and when I did the P&P online, you don't ge the additional options for the label to cover the sales tax has been paid (Non-IOSS I assume), however the shipping address on the ebay invoice had the line "ABN#64652016681 Code:PAID" to go on the label, which apparently does the same thing as the IOSS info on the european labels, i.e indicates to the relevant import authorities that the sales tax has been paid. But for a US sale, the RM online P&P also doesnt have the additional options as for Europe, but nor does it have the equivalent "### Code: Paid", even though ebay do take the Sales tax for the US stuff. So how do I indicate on my package/label creation that the tax has been paid?

Not sure if its relevant, but I'm not a buisnesss seller, just the occasional seller of personal items I no longer require for whatever reason.

martindow

I think that the USA has quite a high limit (100 dollars maybe) below which no import charges are made.  If this is still the case there won't be issues sending many items there although the time taken to arrive can be a problem.

Jerry_Cornelius

martindow said:

I think that the USA has quite a high limit (100 dollars maybe) below which no import charges are made.  If this is still the case there won't be issues sending many items there although the time taken to arrive can be a problem.

I've only sent the odd thing to the US since ebay started collecting sales tax, usually cheap (and the P&P has often been more than the item!) but in this case the item I sold went for a lot more than I expected (£300+) so as I know ebay will take the sales tax for this via the seller, I want to make sure the US customs know its been paid, and don't try and charge him again.

Spoonie_Turtle

martindow said:

I think that the USA has quite a high limit (100 dollars maybe) below which no import charges are made.  If this is still the case there won't be issues sending many items there although the time taken to arrive can be a problem.

No it's much higher than that.  It used to be $2000 but last time I checked it had dropped to $800.  I don't know exactly what those charges are though, nor how exactly sales tax is dealt with, so don't know how relevant the limit is in this situation.

Jerry_Cornelius

Spoonie_Turtle said:

martindow said:

I think that the USA has quite a high limit (100 dollars maybe) below which no import charges are made.  If this is still the case there won't be issues sending many items there although the time taken to arrive can be a problem.

No it's much higher than that.  It used to be $2000 but last time I checked it had dropped to $800.  I don't know exactly what those charges are though, nor how exactly sales tax is dealt with, so don't know how relevant the limit is in this situation.

That is interesting, I never really thought about it but if a country has a threshold whereby items under the limit do not attract any duty, why do ebay take sales tax regardless?