Customs duty on gift from USA

You’ve always had to pay customs duty on goods from the USA which is often in excess of the actual value of the goods. This is why you need to be careful if ordering goods from the USA, not only if receiving gifts.

Same with Australia. My niece always sends gifts but we have to pay the "customs" duty or what ever it's called, we don't tell her either . It's not due to Brexit, it's always been that way.

I agrees it was always this way.

Same here in France. I've told my family not to send parcels.

I ended up telling my US cousin that we had to pay a custom charge. She was shocked especially as she also had to pay tax at her end.
She has stopped posting gifts now which is a bit sad but welcome to the world we live in. 😔 😟

Several years ago I bought a very small item from a lady in America, (it fitted into an ordinary envelope) She was horrified when she found out how much it was going to cost. As she had gone to all the trouble of finding it for me I couldn't turn it down.

Yes, this has long been the case as I discovered after ordering some unusual knitting yarn from the USA and found that the VAT and customs duty effectively doubled the price. Nothing to do with Brexit.

However, what I have noticed post-Brexit is that some smaller retailers have set minimum order values for UK customers or explain how VAT has to be dealt with differently depending on the value of the order.

For example this kind of thing from Zentangle in the USA:

zentangle.com/pages/shipping-update-united-kingdom

And this from Stephen and Penelope (yarns) in Amsterdam:

www.stephenandpenelope.com/pages/brexit-faq

Absolutely Avalon. When we sold our villa in Florida about 7 years ago, I insisted that my collection of all things Disney be shipped back here.

The cost of doing so in comparison to the monetary value was, well extortionate TBH, but in terms of the sentimental value, they were priceless.

Vivvq
Wrong on both counts.
Good try at trying to blame Brexit on something you should have checked.

You have been very lucky to have avoided the charge up until now.
We haven’t sent gifts for years. Just use a web site in the country you have family or friends. Quite a few sites will gift wrap for you.

30 years ago we had to ask DHs cousin to stop sending the children presents as it was costing us so much. DH had recently become disabled and lost his job so money was tight.

Shipping from the US is horrendous, my wife gets presents from US relations, they buy from UK suppliers like Fortnum and Mason and other UK retailers and I do the reverse.

Be careful buying from EU sources you may still get a bill for customs clearance.

"Be careful buying from EU sources you may still get a bill for customs clearance."
This is true David49........a few months ago I ordered some fabric from what was portrayed as being a UK company. After the confirmation email was received I found that the order was being filled and despatched from Germany - and that customer clearance would be required and might incur a charge.
I am very careful who I order from now - as I purchase a lot of fabric and have always preferred to support local businesses as much as possible.

I like Laura Geller make up. It is an American brand but is available from a few suppliers here in the UK. It is easily bought on EBay from British suppliers but also from American suppliers. The mark up if you buy from America doubles the price, so I don’t buy that way. I buy from stores, or Amazon, or sometimes EBay, but always from a British supplier.

Friends sent me a parcel for Christmas from Germany.
I was asked to pay customs charges and a Royal Mail handling fee before the parcel was released.
We have exchanged gifts at Christmas for many years but this is the first time this has happened.

Goods that have a value below £39 will be duty and tax free.
Goods between £40 a d £135 will be duty free but subject to VAT @ 29% for most goods.
Goods over £135 will be charged duty and VAT .

This is the situation for gifts from the USA to the UK.

I had to pay about 30 pounds on a twin set from the US .
I was so excited to be getting such a lovely gift .
My friend and I no longer send presents to each other .
We wait until we see each other then exchange our saved up gifts .

vivvq

I always exchange special Christmas decorations with a cousin in the USA. This year I had to pay £17.48 to release the gift. £9.48 was VAT and £8 Royal Mail handling charge. It seems that this is one of the outworkings of Brexit. There is no charge for EU countries, nor is there any customs duty on the gift that I send. I haven't told my cousin because she would be upset that I had to pay to receive her gift.

I remember having to pay quite a lot of money years ago for a christening gift which was sent for DGD from Australia, plus VAT even though GST had been paid in Australia. I also had to go to collect it from the nearest Customs office.

We used to send gifts to family in Canada and they to us. It is important that a customs declaration form is filled in and attached to the parcel. From memory you had to state whether it was a gift or not, what it was and also the value of the item, if the value was below a certain amount no duty was payable, the figures NotSpaghetti quotes sound right. I once purchased a second hand CD from an online site, it came from the USA and because the sender hadn’t filled in a customs declaration form I had to pay more in tax than the CD was worth. That customs declaration form is very important.

I once paid just under £80 to receive a (rather nice) gift of wine from Italy!

My son had bought it directly from the producer because I had said how very lush it was!

BTW. I read somewhere that if the parcel has several gifts in, clearly recorded and listed as for different people you can often send the duty free sum per person. This is, as I said, in the one parcel but correctly labeled- up to a maximum amount according to the country and still be tax/duty free.

I'm going to look into this ahead of next Christmas re posting abroad.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has done this?