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Dodgy Tax


Gardian
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Forgive me if this has already been covered in another thread - if so, would somebody point me in the right direction.

My question is about these arbitrary ‘tax’ charges on items sent from the UK.

Mrs G bought a couple of items of knitwear by mail order and had them sent to our son’s UK address.  We would then pick them up when we were over at Christmas.  However, we decided to cancel a week ago because of our grandson contracting Covid and asked our son to mail the items on to us.

We were out when the postman tried to deliver today, but there was the usual ‘you can pick it up from tomorrow’ form, together with the glad tidings that there would be a tax charge of €20.  Why?  Why is there a charge if it comes by post as opposed to the back of our car if we had been able to travel over?  Also, how do they calculate the very ‘round’ figure of €20?

It strikes me that there’s some cretin at one of the handling points who says to himself “I think this is a €20 one, but I’ll make the next one €30”.

Any insight appreciated.

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19 hours ago, Gardian said:

Forgive me if this has already been covered in another thread - if so, would somebody point me in the right direction.

My question is about these arbitrary ‘tax’ charges on items sent from the UK.

Mrs G bought a couple of items of knitwear by mail order and had them sent to our son’s UK address.  We would then pick them up when we were over at Christmas.  However, we decided to cancel a week ago because of our grandson contracting Covid and asked our son to mail the items on to us.

We were out when the postman tried to deliver today, but there was the usual ‘you can pick it up from tomorrow’ form, together with the glad tidings that there would be a tax charge of €20.  Why?  Why is there a charge if it comes by post as opposed to the back of our car if we had been able to travel over?  Also, how do they calculate the very ‘round’ figure of €20?

It strikes me that there’s some cretin at one of the handling points who says to himself “I think this is a €20 one, but I’ll make the next one €30”.

Any insight appreciated.

Goods entering france from outside the EU are subject to VAT plus any duty that may be payable, plus a handlng charge by whoever handles it - even if VAT has been paid in the country of origin.

The only way to avoid this is to  buy from a business in the UK that is registered for the IOSS scheme or for example an alternative Royal Mail scheme.

https://www.royalmail.com/business/international/guide/delivered-duties-paid-ioss

Both Amazon and Ebay use the IOSS scheme. ( IOSS = Import one stop shop)

I use a supplier in the UK that has registered for the IOSS scheme which means that if the invoice value is €150 or less, (not including delivery or UK vat), it will be imported into france vat and tax free. I pay the vat to the supplier at the UK rate of 20% and it gets delivered to france without any tax, duty, or handling charges. The vat collected by the supplier at the point of sale gets paid into the EU IOSS scheme by the supplier.

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Harnser .....

Thank you very much for your clear and comprehensive reply.

I collected the parcel from the post office this morning and asked why there was a charge.  “Dunno” said the woman charmingly.

I insisted on some documentation to validate the charge and she eventually produced something that said “Frais de douane (its actually (TVA) €12, Frais Poste €8.  With your explanation, I can now see how they arrived at the €20, because my son had declared the value as £50 - thus 20% TVA would get you to roughly €12.  

Quite simply, this means that any parcel sent by family or friends will attract a ‘hit’ relating to the declared value.

We were quite amused though, because only two days ago my son had sent another parcel with various things inside.  He used an Irish Postal Service box (green, with shamrocks on it) which had been used to send some things to them and was the ideal size.  We reckon that the French authorities just ignored it because they thought it had come from Ireland !

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I fully appreciate what you say in that any charges seem to be made at random - on a whim - despite the reams of regulations that apply to imports.

But the IOSS works - I was a guinea pig for the first IOSS shipment in January  which went wrong and the supplier reimbursed me for my costs. It went wrong because DHL whom they ship with, and who are the handling agent, got it wrong.

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