Because of Brexit I should no longer have to pay VAT in the UK. But on the eBay listing it is not clear whether the price is with or without VAT. Now I wonder if eBay sees my IP address and already knows I would not need to pay VAT. So could anyone in the UK please check what the price is for this item with/without VAT? Thanks in advance!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/for-Ford-...-/282062353648

 

Ł135.00

 

Ł135.
Ebay won't be adjusting for VAT through I.P addresses otherwise anyone using a VPN would be able to avoid it.
If the seller is not VAT registered then they can't deduct VAT from the sales price,
I assume this seller would be due to number of items and value sold.

If you do buy it VAT free you would still have to pay VAT at the point it enters the Netherlands, although only at the VAT rate there.
You would need to contact the Seller to get a VAT free price.
It may be that it would show VAT free at the time of purchase.

I buy parts from the U.S and when the delivery address is added, on most large seller sites, it calculates VAT and Import duty for the U.K.
This was before Brexit and still applies.
Some U.S states have local taxes, I've never had to pay that in over 20years of buying from there.

Under new UK VAT rules all goods sold for delivery to the U.K and under Ł135 must have VAT and Import duty charged, at the current U.K rates, at the point of sale in the country of sale.

I'll have to look at the rules for U.K sellers and VAT for non U.K sales.

And of course the same position applies to us in the U.k
Anything we buy from Europe should be VAT free, but then charged at the current U.K rate, usually by the seller as I stated above.
As a result of this there are thousands of E.U sellers who at the moment will no longer sell to U.K sellers as they aren't UK Vat registered or part of a scheme like World pay.

 

Thank you both for checking and the detailed reply! That price is indeed the same as I see, so I assume that is including the UK VAT. In my opinion I should be able to buy it VAT free in the UK, as I believe I will need to pay Dutch VAT when it enters the Netherlands.

I contacted eBay already to ask this and this was the reply I got:

So when I read this "eBay is required to charge the amount directly to buyers and pass it to the authorities." I assumed eBay would take the UK VAT and transfer it to the Dutch authorities. So I ordered the item last week and paid the 135 pounds plus shipping. But when I now trace my parcel online it says it has arrived in the Netherlands and cleared customs and I will need to pay 52,17 euro import duties when it is delivered to me. If that is the case I wonder if that includes the Dutch VAT. But altogether the Brexit has made ordering things in the UK a lot more difficult and expensive.

 

The seller should have supplied an Export document with the goods to show your customs clearing if Vat and duties for your country had been collected.
I suspect the seller hasn't done this.

Message the seller and ask if they are VAT registered in The Netherlands or are registered in the MOSS scheme (EU member VAT scheme) or are in the Ebay Global Shipping program

If no, report them to ebay to sort it out as the seller should have a warning that Duties and VAT may be applied at entry to the buyers Country

 

It must have taken an exceptionally retarded group of people to dream this up.....like expecting thousands, tens of thousands of sellers in foreign countries to become tax collectors for the UK ? Are they fucking mental ?
If I was a seller....as many are doing, they'd tell the UK to fuck off. Collect your own taxes.

 

That doesn't make much sense! Why would anyone in another country give a flying fuck about UK tax laws?
How are they planning on collecting it?

 

I sell a lot of items abroad on ebay and since 1st Jan we remove UK VAT and make the customer aware VAT and customs will be payable in their country. I know a lot of sellers are ignoring this and the customer ends up paying VAT at both ends.

 

It only applies to foreign busineses not to individual sellers.
Foreign business including any in the E.U will have to submit a UK Vat return just as they have to submit returns for taxes in their own country.
If the business seller doesn't collect the Vat and Duty and show it on the import documents then it's still charged at point of entry to the U.K and collected here as prior to Jan 2021.
Similar schemes may exist for other non EU countries selling to each other already.

One advantage of requiring the business seller to collect the Duty and Tax on items below Ł135 is that UK customers avoid being charged on average Ł15 by the likes of Fedex, Parcelforce etc for processing and collecting the duty when Ł15 is quite a penalty on that value item.

Larger businesses in the U.S have been collecting the Vat and Duty for years and are either U.K Vat registered or use Worldpay or similar to process it.
Ebay have their Global Shipping program available to sellers to process the Vat and Duty and complete paperwork.

 

There is zero reason they should and nor should they be working for hmrc ( for free ), because they're too fucking lazy to work themselves.

It really has taken a special kind of retard to dream up this bullshit.

 

This guy covers it well a few minutes in

 

FedEx/UPS are utter robbing bastards when it comes to import duties. They literally pluck numbers from thin air, blame everyone else, then say you cannot dispute it without paying an up front charge, which often is higher than the original charges !!!
I will never buy anything from a seller that use either of those shippers again.

And I've never bought anything from any US seller where they have collected vat or duty up front. Although ebay's global shipping program is very good, as it gets stuff shipped at very sensible prices, and at least they too get all duties etc correct.

 

Be very careful of Ebay GSP, they will take your item and dispose of it, if they decide they won't ship it. No other line of action is possible.

Purchased a set of EsCos fuel lines on ebay that shipped via GSP, ebay took them, issued a refund and gave no explanation.

The seller and I went to considerable effort to get them back or have them shipped by an alternative method, but we got nowhere.

It was a desktop decision by ebay and/or pitney bowes, as they never looked at the item. They blamed each other rather than manage the issue. They contravened there own written guidelines and just stopped responding when that was pointed out.

A bunch of thieving lawless cowboys.

 

I've heard of that happen with large items, although it was never made clear who ended up at a loss though. I was once tempted to buy an engine block where ebay listed it as $200 shipping, which was mental cheap. But I didn't want to risk it for both my own money and what impact it might have had on the seller, as knew it was unrealistic for it to be shipped that cheap.

Clearly if the item is an odd shape/size, perhaps very fragile, considered dangerous goods....which any mention of "fuel" could imply, you're taking a risk

 

MARC,
Dangerous goods was the crux of the issue I believe. But they did nothing more than read the ebay listing heading. No effort to ascertain if the line was new... never had fuel anywhere near it, taken from 10 years of storage and cleaned before shipping or some other scenario.

There was no fuel on or in the line. Some desk jockey could read but not actually get up and have a look. If they are not checking goods the inverse situation could be happening a lot.

The seller was even prepared to personally go and collect the item from pitney bowes / ebay, but no go.

Regarding your OP, I have been getting stuff shipped down under for years. The whole tax and duty arrangement has been a pain forever.

Sometimes it is cheaper to buy new from an online retailer who exports vat free than to buy used through ebay. The ebay price is the ebay price, no export vat adjustment is made for the sellers location. Australia recently changed the import rules for online sites shipping to Australia, now ebay adds GST to the sale price of anything imported here from elsewhere while not giving a vat credit for the export from elsewhere.

Bottom line, ebay is the last choice now. Better to go outside ebay where possible. Contact the seller if they look legit.

Yes it is a screw up.

 

I just received the parcel. I indeed had to pay another 52,17 euros. That is 3.5% import duties over the 135 pounds (that already included the British VAT) and then over that another 21% for Dutch VAT. And then another 13 euros of handling costs. If this is going to be the way for the future this has probably been my last purchase from the UK.

 

BTW, another question on the content of the kit... Where are the small O-rings and red caps for that are in the middle of the picture? I can't think of any reason I would need those.

 

You should not have been charged the UK VAT as it is being exported.

red caps for bleed nipples or something ?

 

You should have asked the seller to send you an offer without VAT, if you just clicked buy it now its one of those things.

 

Stupid question time! But didn't we do a deal with the EU to continue free trade between the UK and the rest of Europe?

 

No idea what all those deals and nonsense actually mean. But that is an aside to VAT. The free trade aspect might just mean no duty on a small number of specific items ?

Before everyone just paid VAT at the point of sale, and that was that. Now each country will want their own VAT. Load of balls really.

If you think it's bad there....it's even worse over here, were we have been pretty much fucked from all sides. Most places claim they will not ship outside UK, even though we are in the UK, and some won't ship here because we're Northern Ireland and the new sea border is just a total and utter clusterfuck.