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I recently recevied a parcel from my cousin in Australia: some clothes for my son. She filled in the customs form correctly, that it was a gift worth AU$76 (approx £49)
Now as its a [url= http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&propertyType=document&_pageLabel=pageTravel_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_000014#P56_5044 ]gift over £40[/url], I had to pay import duty, AND a royal mail "admin" charge of £8.
What gets me is I had to pay the Import duty on the full amount, not just the difference from the limit to the actual value, so the clothes ended up costing me around £17 to receive them!
Should I have just had to pay for the difference? Have I got grounds to complain to Royal Mail for over-charging me as its their expensive admin dept that calculated the amount to pay?
Below £40 is exempt, but it doesn't say that you only pay on the excess.
you pay it on the full amount once over the limit.
Do you think tax avoidance is fine? Tell them to pay up for messing g up the customs form.
Do you think tax avoidance is fine? Tell them to pay up for messing g up the customs form.
I'm happy with the way the form was filed in, I'm not suggesting she should have filled it in dishonestly. I'm happy enough paying the tax due, I just think its a little unfair that I should be charged on the full amount, not on the difference from the £40 tax-free limit, to the £49 actual value.
If my cousin had just sent a pair of trousers and a shirt in one pack, and the jumper in another, yes the postage would have cost a bit more, but I wouldn't have had to pay anything.
I bet when she filled it in in Australia, she wasn't told about the UK import limits.
ir_bandito - Member
I bet when she filled it in in Australia, she wasn't told about the UK import limits.
You need a reality check! Do you really think post office staff have a duty to advise you about the customs regs of any country you might send something to?
You can't expect to be hand held on trivia like this.
Suck it up.
Import duty in Oz is on packages over $1000 IIRC (think it was raised as there were so many small packages that they couldn't keep up), so she maybe didn't realise just how tight the UK was?
I bet when she filled it in in Australia, she wasn't told about the UK import limits.
That was a statement, not a complaint. So no need to "suck it up". 😛
To make things clear, what I'm sort-of complaining about is paying the tax on the full amount, rather than just the difference. Likening it to income tax, you pay basic rate on your first £34k-ish, then higher rate on anything extra up to £150k. If you earn over £34k, you don't pay higher rate on all of your salary, just the difference.
I'm not trying to avoid paying tax. Well, I am, but that's because I feel I've been taxed unfairly. Made worse by the Royal Mail's admin fee being nearly as much as the tax!
Yep, it's harsh, but there it is.
Out of that lot, I think the 'admin' charge is the cheekiest. Does it really cost them eight quid to take some money off you?