Tax/vat on international ebay sales

se2020

I normally use the ebay gsp program but I have sold an item to a buyer in a country that's not covered by the gsp.

According to the "buyer paid" item email I had the buyer has been charged tax/vat on the sale by ebay.

As I am sending the item via royal mail how do I add this information onto the customs form? 
Otherwise, will the buyer not get charged import tax/vat when it arrives?

Jerry_Cornelius

se2020 said:

As I am sending the item via royal mail how do I add this information onto the customs form? 
Otherwise, will the buyer not get charged import tax/vat when it arrives?

Which country is it?

If its to European destinations, you can do online postage and there will be an option to select the item as "Sale Of Goods" or somesuch, which will allow you to enter the ebay order number and other details, and this will be encoded into the label so when its scanned at the other end it will be recognised that the tax has been paid. It will have a black IOSS icon on the label too.

If its Australia, all you need to do is add some code to the address label, this should be on the ebay invoice somewhere, something like a a letter/number code with "Tax PAID" on the end.

Other countries i'm unsure of, because, like when I post to the US, even tho the tax has been taken, neither of the above options come up. In the case of the US though i understand they have a high import threshold (something like USD $800), so if its under that you can send and they shouldn't be charged anything. However, in the case of the US, I've never understood why ebay still take taxes regardless of this fact.

se2020

It's puerto rico which is part of the US I think so probably as you said above.
I didn't get any options to put anything in. It's only a £25 item (plus £28 postage)

Jerry_Cornelius

se2020 said:

It's puerto rico which is part of the US I think so probably as you said above.
I didn't get any options to put anything in. It's only a £25 item (plus £28 postage)

No, as I said, certain countries, there seems to be nothing in place for this on RM. Royal Mail do operate a DDP program, but that involves RM controlling the collection and invoicing of fees, but ebay already do this themselves automatically now as we know. As i've said, the odd US items i've done i've just posted them and marked the CN22 as Gift rather than Sale Of Goods, although someone will probably say thats fraudulent, its also fraudulent if the receiver was to be charged fees twice. Apart from the most recent item to the US that was "lost" in the UK mail system for 2 months, I've never had an issue to the US doing it that way.