ebay advice

i have just perchased a lens of ebay from the usa seller want the money send to his palpall e/mail account how do i do this i have a palpall account but not done it this way before will i have to pa any inport tax?
advice please

Your payment via PayPal is easy enough. You can select to pay in US $ instead of UK £ and then just pay same as normal.

Import tax is "hit and miss" and depends on luck. If there is a low declared value of the item (less than £19 I think can't remember exact figure off-hand) then you won't have to pay, if more, you might. You could be clobbered for Duty, then charge VAT, and then the carrier slaps a big handling fee on top...with VAT again.

Trouble with the seller putting "gift worth $10" on the package, if it goes missing, that's all the insurance will pay out!

thanks for the advice all sorted

And you, as the importer, can be prosecuted for attempted tax evasion if HMRC open it to check.

In my experience you are likely to be charged import duty on items from USA. If a carrier such as UPS is involved they always collect the duty. If Royal Mail makes the final delivery they charge you the duty plus £8 for their trouble. This means that any items just over the exemption limit of £18 tend to be expensive. If you buy from B&H their website quotes the duty and delivery cost and includes it in the final price when you buy something from them.

Oddly enough items posted from Hong Kong often seem to escape duty though this may be because eBay sellers in China often put "no commercial value", "sample" or "gift" on the customs declaration.

Archie

One thing which occurred to me with the planned VAT rise - will the import duty threshold also go up to £20? I assume that it's set at £18 as this is easier than making it £17.50, or 17.5% of £100...

I doubt it. Anyway, VAT is applied afterwards not before so the cut-off is purely arbitrary.

I don't know when they came up with the £18 threshold, but I'd hazard a guess it was in the 1970's when all the rules about bringing stuff in and out the country were relaxed - anyway, whenever it was, £18 was worth a lot more than it is now! (Gordon Brown only mastered the art of creeping-taxation, he didn't invent it...)

VAT is seperate from Duty.

I looked it up this time :

£18 is the limit for Commercial Items, then VAT.
£40 is the limit for Personal Gifts, then VAT.
At £135 they start to charge Customs Duty, but if this is less than £9, it is waived.

(Different rules for alcohol, tobacco, and perfume - Excise]

The real thrill comes when you have to find the EU Commodity Codes for stuff - as I had to earlier this year, deeply dull, but amazing how bureaucrats have managed to slice everything you can possibly think of, and many things you can't, into different catagories...

Note. The £18 limit includes the post and packing charge.

How will they know what was written on the customs form if it's gone missing? Or is it recorded at some point? It could be a problem in a claim for a damaged item, though.

It is an offence to receive an item knowing the customs declaration has been falsified, but this doesn't often seem to be checked and enforced.

It's still an offence as is Insurance Fraud....just pay up and smile!

Just received a lens clamp from China took 5 weeks I've had stuff before that's arrived in days. This was signed for though so maybe the Customs and Circumcise held it up to check what it was worth..... all of 10 quid