As far as I can tell they just randomly choose and amount occasionally. No idea what rules they apply. But that’s the UK for you. Be interested to here what other Brits pay though.
In Turkey,
VAT Limit 75€
after 75€ ;
From EU => %18 VAT
From outside of EU=> %20 VAT
all cellphones , medicine ,cosmetics , food supplements under a ban…
In Malaysia you will get tax if above RM500 (about U$167) for 10% of the value. And there is no custom fee, but you need to pay the shipping cost for custom to ship it to you, so it depends on the weight or dimension of the parcel. And you can go to custom office to collect if you want.
Toyota GT86 is about RM243k (about U$81K) in Malaysia. No Toyota Aygo here, some predict if it was here, could be around RM65k.
In the UK, goods imported from outside of EU over the value of 15 GBP are eligible for import VAT at 20%. There is also an 8 GBP handling charge.
That is a quite flashlight friendly limit…
When it comes to car taxes. WOW, you guys have it too. A bit more reasonable when you put 30.000.000+ million people in a “fairly small” country. Car taxes kinda make sense from an environmental /air quality point of view, although they seem quite extreme.
Only 5 million people in Norway. We currently have a very special tax system when it comes to cars. Electric vehicles are more attractive here compared to most countries in the world due to basically no taxes. And regular cars have a ton of taxes. A brand new car with 350+hp are mostly for the richer people.
A normally cheap high hp, high fuel consumption Ford Mustang would cost WAAAY more than a Tesla Models S here…
A GT86 and a Tesla Model S is about the same price… 
Its not consistent in the Philippines. :~
For all my orders coming from FastTech, DX, WallBuys, AuraBuy, AliExpress & International Outdoors, I was only made to pay a tax amounting to P50 or about $1.11 for every package except for one. The tax was P265 or about $5.88 and the package from FastTech was worth $71.
I’ve ordered items worth more than $71 but no only $1.11 was demanded from me.
Maybe it depends on who the inspector was, what his/her mood was, or how large the package was. All my packages however, except the ‘letter’ you sent containing the mod parts I won from you, were opened and resealed with scotch tape. 
Why are they taxing us while we purchase and pump money into market? What it means value added tax?
And my country custom don’t trust value declared by seller. They want me to show paypal transaction or credit card statement. This part is not so fun when it comes to purchasing flashlights.
If a flashlight is 35$ with free shipping, it will get taxes/fees. (35$ total for product + shipping)
If a lights is 30$, and I paid 30$ for shipping and handling (60$ total) no extra taxes would be added.
When that is said, most China based sellers seem to often just mark as gift and 10$ value. I have never have any of those packages checked as I am aware of, but I suspect that if its a fairly large and heavy package, they might check it.
If its a (legit) gift, then the tax limit would be about 165$ here.
LOL. Not fun indeed! :bigsmile:
That part can be a problem, especially for free stuff (like some equipment for review).
What have happened to you?
Did you mean me?
Usual a some letters back and forth, where I have to say a couple of times that there is no payment. After some time they are usual convinced that I will not produce any payment info and they open a loophole that they can estimate a value. When I agree to that I get the item. The problem is that this communication can take more than a month. They have recently changed to email communication, but this has not improved the processing speed.
The problem is when the sender do a $10 declaration for a $50 item (Retail price), they are very good at spotting that. As long as the declaration is close to the retail price, they usual pass it on without more than one or two days delay.
So, since all of you have these "fees", how do you deal with insurance Let's say you want a $200 light and you want the seller to declare it as $20. If he does, then it's only worth $20 declared value and if it's broken, you only get $20. You loose! How is that going to work? Do you expect the seller to chalk up the money even when you wanted it declared under value or do you eat it and move on?
I'm just asking, since I don't see how this would work well at all.
Can they tell the price differences between budget and premium lights? 
Unless it ends up in ParcelFarce's hands in which case it used to be £14 but it has probably gone up. The value includes the cost of postage so even items of trivial value from the US can be hit by the clearance charge. Couriers charge way more than this - I have been hit for a £50 clearance charge for a non-dutiable item from the US. Which was taken from a credit card they had no authority to debit. Last time OWC (or any of their agents) sees any of my money. And they got firmly told why when I raised a dispute with the credit card company and invited UPS to sue me. UPS will never see another penny from me either. Funnily enough they never did try to sue me.
A few years ago stuff from the US rarely, if ever, incurred charges. Nowadays pretty much everything from there does.
VAT at 20% is due on all imports from outside the EU worth over £15 (Dropped from £18 a couple of years ago) including the cost of postage, but is not collected if the amount is less than (from memory £8) but the PO will hit you with a ransom clearance charge of £8 if the Customs have been anywhere near it. Or if it is a larger package and it ends up with the Royal Mail's ParcelFarce Force division £14 unless it has gone up recently.
A $200 or so flashlight (Varapower 2000 prototype) from the US cost me around £220 by the time I got my paws on it. And at that point that worked out at about $400. My only other expensive light from the US was around 2007 and was clearly marked as $120 value but incurred no sort of charges at all.
Consider it a sales tax. But it isn't really, it just feels that way to an end-user who cannot reclaim it. It is the way the EU is financed and is mandatory in every EU country.
It is an enormously complex system that turns everyone who sells more than a small amount into an unpaid tax collector. And the Revenue have powers that frighten policemen. Like breaking in the doors at 3am on a Sunday and removing every computer, all the disks and all the manual records to check them. On suspicion. They even hauled away a mainframe and put the (large) company out of business as they didn't get anything back for around two years.
I believe they check the internet, i.e. as long as they can find the name of the product, they can usual find a price.
Seems like they’re doing their research!
I wonder how much time it takes them to analyze individual package.
How would you describe the time the package is at customs?
I think it’s up to the seller to make a claim for damaged or lost items.