What's your country import limit to not get charged with extras? (customs and taxes)

I have read on a Swedish site that duties less than 100SEK will not be collected but if that is including the fee it is surely a silly rule.

I checked what HMRC (Our Customs) say.

From

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageTravel_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_000014&propertyType=document

2.3 What are the limits for customs duty and import VAT?

  • Commercial consignments of £18 or less are free from customs duty and import VAT. For example, goods purchased over the internet with an intrinsic value not exceeding £18, will not be charged any duty or VAT but this does not include alcohol, tobacco products, perfume or toilet waters. See paragraph 2.5, 2.6 and section 3.
  • If you are sent a gift with a value of £40 or less, and which complies with the rules shown in paragraph 2.4, it will be free from customs duty and import VAT, but this does not include alcohol, tobacco, perfumes and toilet waters.
  • Customs duty becomes payable if the value of the goods is over £135 but duty is waived if the amount of duty calculated is less than £9.

There are a number of other circumstances where relief from some or all customs charges may be available. If you think your goods may be eligible for a relief you should contact the Customs Helpline for further information.

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2.4 Gifts

Goods sent as a gift that are over £40 in value are liable to import VAT. Customs duty also becomes payable if the value of the goods is over £135 but is waived if the amount of duty calculated is less than £9.

To qualify as a gift:

  • the customs declaration must be completed correctly
  • the gift must be sent from a private person outside the EU to a private person(s) in this country
  • there is no commercial or trade element and the gift has not been paid for either directly or indirectly
  • the gift is of an occasional nature only, for example, for a birthday or anniversary.

Note: if you purchase goods from outside the EU to give as a gift to a relative or friend, whether or not addressed to that person, is treated as a ‘commercial consignment’ for which the import VAT relief threshold is £18 (paragraph 2.3 refers).

Argentina:

I theory there are taxes of 50% of the value of the object you receive, and you have a "free tax ticket" of 25usd per year per person. So, if you receive something wich costs 30usd, you will have to pay the 50% of the difference, that is (30-25)/2 = 2,5usd.

In real life, if packages are not too big, customs don't check it and you receive them at home. So I buy multiple small packages.

Not sure about that. The particular order of mine that got caught was for 352 SEK. I had to pay 88 SEK (25% moms) plus 100 SEK for handling a procedure I did not want to have in the first place.

Germany:

officially 22 € but customs officers don't start collecting under 26,30€ (equal to 5€ tax)

26,30-150€ taxes of 19%

150-30000000000000 € taxes of 19% plus import duties (which vary widely on which product you are importing)

So essentially I try to stay under 26,30 € which equals to 33,92 $ atm (depending on the actual PP exchange rate)

I envy You.

And the beers are cheaper in Germany also.

And even the mass-market German beer is better than the mass-market British stuff which I am sure has cats involved somewhere.

LOL Don. It is an evening of laughter it seems.

Well, soon the Easter will be here. Then we will have some very good, strong 0.5 L beers in Superbrugsen called "Willemoes Påske Ale" (has a dark green label). They are often on sale before Easter (3 for DKR 40-45)

When she occationaly drink a beer my wife likes dark beers, so I´ll remember that offer. Strong, you said.

Maybe she´ll get some funny ideas! Let there be Easter soon!

I have heard that UK are famous for making beers thinner than water.

Good English beer works very well for me. Scottish beers not so much because they are too strong and too sweet. Strong beers in general I find to be unacceptably sweet.

But I'd bet on Fuller's London Pride against any beer anywhere. Or better still, if you can get it, Fuller's ESB. If you get the chance, try them.

If you like ridiculously strong beers, look out for Tactical Nuclear Penguin which is brewed about 50km from me.

I think it is revolting, but it is the highest alcohol beer ever brewed at 32% alcohol by volume. And 125 euros per litre.

http://www.brewdog.com/tactical_nuclear_penguin

It is €150 for personal purchases if items are in low volumes and if not seen like reseller import. Taxes and other import duties for items above this limit.

Customs may still hold it to inspect if the price declared is true but many goods passed without problems if under €150. Some say declaring even a $400 camera as gift and lower than $100 may let it pass through the customs without problems. But some customs may have memory and count your incoming packages and mark you as a trader. My goods from China never stopped at customs with their cheap bubble wraps, gift labels, and $10-15 totals, even though 7 packages arrived at the same time. :)

Yes, real love in a canoe stuff. I don't like yellow beers, I always feel that they are what happens after a lot of beer.

But the best British beers are very, very good. They are just hard to find. Here's a list of my favourites:

Spitfire. Brewed in Kent where most of the UK's hops come from. Very bitter, very good.

Badger's Golden Glory. Fruity flavoured. Wonderful stuff

Badger's Golden Champion is even better, but hard to find.

Fuller's ESB. Brewed in the most expensive brewery anywhere, the site of the brewery in Chiswick in London is worth hundreds of millions of euros, maybe a billion euros. They refuse to sell the site and move elsewhere.

Fuller's London Pride. Again brewed in Chiswick.

Boddington's Bitter. Used to be brewed next door to Strangeways Prison in Manchester. This is a mass-market beer but is good.

The Scottish mass-market beers are best avoided. McEwans IPA is the closest to drinkable of all of them, but cats are still involved.

And for a strongly recommended Irish beer, Guinness that was brewed in Dublin. If it was brewed anywhere else, smile a lot and walk away in a hurry.

Thanks Don for the very thorough information of better english beers. I occationaly come

to the UK and its always nice to know what is best to eat and drink.

Another thing that bit me last week is that the German customs don't use the exchange rate valid on the day of purchase, but determine it for a whole month in advance. When I ordered the PICKIt2 and a ZIF-Adapter from Hong Kong, the exchange rate was good enough to keep the whole order slightly below 26.30€. With the official rate, it ended up at 27.26€, so I had to pay 19% import duties, 5.18€.

But of course, the customs officials being German, I had to explain what this thing is used for, so they could determine the category of goods to classify this thing as. Not that it would have mattered, as the value was well below 150€ and they couldn't have levied any custom duties at all. It took us about twenty minutes to come to a conclusion. The whole thing had the air of an absurd comedy about it... I think I'll have to write it down, here you go:

Dramatis personæ

O1: Customs official #1, a jovial elderly civil servant, who seems to enjoy doing his job

O2: Customs official #2, a young, bright eyed woman, kinda cute.

Me: a poor flashaholic, who just wants to get his programmer, so he can start messing around with PIC MCUs.

Act 1:

Our hero enters the customs office to retrieve a package sent to him from the other side of the globe.

Me: Hello I'd like to pick up my package please. Here's the PayPal invoice, it's in £.

O1: *leaves to fetch the package from the storage room*

O2: *takes the receipt and calculates the value in €*

O1: *comes back with package* Here you go, would you open it please?

Me: Sure, no problem.

O2: We have to charge import tax, it's more than 5€.

Me: *silent* Damn!

O1: *looks at the contents of the package and tries to match it to the items listed on the invoice*

O1: So, what does this thing do?

Me: It's used for programming microcontrollers.

O1: *consults big book of customs rules* It's a computer?

Me: No, it just puts the program into a chip.

O1: It tells the chip what to do? *starts browsing The Book again*

Me: You could say that.

O1: *points into The Book* Category XYZ, device for controlling industrial machines!

Me: What?! No, it's just a chip, not a machine.

O1: But it tells the chip what to do, right? How does it do that?

Me: Well, it writes the machine code into the chip.

O1: *more browsing The Book* So, it's a copying device?

Me: Hmm, sort of... in an abstract way.

O1: *more browsing* Ah, category YZX, device for copying magnetic or optic media...

O2: *starts typing*

Me: No, the data is stored in flash, electronically.

O2: *stops typing*

O1: Hmm... *more browsing*

O1: *still more browsing*

O1: Could it be called a storage device?

Me: No, the data is stored on the MCU, not the programmer.

O1: So the copying is done on the chip?

Me: *reluctantly* yes...

O1: *points into The Book again* Category ZXY, device for controlling electronic duplication machines.

Me: Fine, I can live with that.

O2: *starts typing again, computer emits error noises*

O2: I can't enter that code, the computer won't accept it.

O1: *looks at The Book, looks at the calender hanging on the wall* Oh, right, it's 2011 already.

O1: *goes to the filing cabinet and fetches The New Book* Let's look up the new code... *starts browsing for a minute or two*

O1: A-HA! The new code is ZXY-a.

O2: *starts typing again*

O2: *still typing*

O2: *typing*

O2: *typing*

O2: *presses a key with an air of accomplishment, a printer starts warming up*

O1: *has been reading in The New Book meanwhile* There is no computer connected to this thing, right?

Me: *jaw drops* Of course there is, you can't use this thing without a computer!

O2: *aborts the print job*

O1: Oh dear... *starts browsing The New Book again*

O1: Okay, category ZYX-c, computer controlled electronic duplication machine.

Me: Fine, whatever...

O2: *starts typing*

O2: *keeps typing*

O2: *still typing*

O2: *starts printer*

O2: *fetches four pages from printer, starts filling out the official receipt, green, with a big federal crest on it*

O2: *applies official customs stamp to receipt, signs receipt, staples receipt to printed pages*

O2: That will be 5 Euros and 18 Cents, please.

Me: *hands over the money, grabs the paperwork*

O1 & O2: Bye, have a nice day!

Me: Bye! *leaves*

Epilogue:

Our hero crosses the parking lot in front of the customs office, unlocks his car, sits in the driver's seat. He stares into the void for a few moments, then starts reading the paperwork, still clenched in his hand. After a few more moments, he starts chuckling, then laughing out loud. Bureaucracy really is one of the strangest things in the universe.

Imported goods (other than alcohol or tobacco) with a value less than $1,000 are exempt from import duty and GST (VAT). Coincidentally there is a noisy campaign by retailers at the moment to have that limit reduced.

Here is almost the same as in Spain.

The diference is only on the charged money from beying processed. Can be 3€ for a small package, or 12€ for a big one+1.80€ for a form+0.70€ for filling the form(?)+0.70 for sendind it attached to item(??)+tax. And the tax, that's called IVA here,(same as VAT?) it's 23%. Continental Spain's IVA is 18%, I believe... They too add everything and then apply 23%

But roughly it is the same.

They verify just a couple of items in each load, and not every load arriving at customs is checked. They usually check big packages and/or if they are insured. That means that the item is valuable and that they can get some money for the item checked.

I get a couple of items checked each year, and not always get taxed. I've been charged for items valued at 25€ and not been charged for items valued at 70€.(sent them PayPal receipts) Go figure...

Kind of lotery, in my opinion.

The thing I like the most, is when they check the items and write on the outside of the package the name of the item. I know that the guy that is doing that, can't be an expert in everything, but sometimes I just laugh myself silly.

For instance calling flashlights, canisters, monoculars, telescopes...

Edit: forgot one thing. You have 30days (since the arriving of customs letter) to take care of all the papers demanded to receive your item. If not, item will go for the portuguese state and sold at an annual auction.

Here in Israel the limit is 50$ per package, and it doesn't seem that the customs aggregate packages for a person over any time period (although there have been some rumors of them doing so). For more than 50$ there's VAT (15%?) and customs fee (generally 30% but not applicable to computer parts or other electronics, to the best of my knowledge), plus some handling fees (can't remember how much but about 20$ maybe?).