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Can anyone help with a tax charge query? I've bought a jacket and its coming from Australia (at first I thought it was from a UK distributer but it seems its not) . Anyway the jacket rrp'd at £400 but it was on sale and had a further 25% off over the weekend bringing it down to £150, postage was £18. Just received an email from DHL looking for £81 import tax. Now I expected to pay something and I've bought stuff from abroad before but this seems very quite excessive to me, initially I'm thinking the retailer has put the value down as £400 but it still seems a high price. Admittedly small print was not read but even now I'm finding it difficult to approximate what the charge actually should be.
So does this seem normal? Was I being optimistic with what I would have expected to pay (£20 would have been nice). Should I challenge the cost or is there anything else I can do? Blame Brexit?
It's an import duty (Google. Clothing duty) on the total including postage, handling fee and vat on the lot?
If. You Google import duty calculator you will get the breakdown of costs
Not a brexit problem even though they let oz in the euro vision
The VAT would have been more than £20 even if they’d put what you actually paid on, plus import duty (not sure how much that is) plus DHLs handling fee. Soon adds up.
There may also be a DHL admin charge which you’ll need to factor in.
Quick maths on that is £65 even at the lower sale price of £150 inc £10 of deferment charges.
12% duty for clothing, 20% vat on total including shipping and the deferment charge and it soon mounts up.
Leather jacket? Leather might be different. 4% customs duty possibly. https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/trade-tariff/commodities/4203100000?day=2&month=9&year=2018
It's duty + shipping + VAT on cost of goods, the duty and the shipping. Duty is charged on items over £135, VAT on everything over £15 (unless VAT exempt).
And then the handling/rip-off fee.
Couriers usually calculate on behalf of HMRC and err on the high side if there's any debate on what to charge and whack on a very high fee for collecting the money. Imports via Royal Mail can be cheaper.
p.s. Check the email was definitely from DHL. There are scams about and some get caught because they may be expecting something and just happen to get a scam email around the same time.
https://www.simplyduty.com/import-calculator/
For next time
And then the handling/rip-off fee.
Problem is you could do it yourself.... but that takes time and systems and people and all of that which sort of cost money. It's not done at cost of course but it costs money to do.
Thanks all, the import calc gave me a figure of £39, I'm guessing the rest is handling fee. Just need to suck it up I suppose. deadkenny not a leather and I'll double check the shipping details, cheers.
I had very similiar with DHL and ordering a chain guide from South Africa, chainguide was $175 USD with free shipping, forgot about duty and VAT, then get a DHL text advising i owed £75! I called DHL and they were able to give me a breakdown, their portion of the pie was only £10ish.
£10ish charge is pretty standard. Was £12 last time for me.