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I don’t mind paying the tax in so much it makes the whole delivery experience much quicker as the taxes are pre paid and it doesn’t get hung up in customs. I do wonder though does this tax ever make it to the destination country like it’s supposed to. We’ll never know and there is as far as I know no way to find out or check, it only becomes a problem if Aliexpress/China is just pocketing this tax charge (or a portion of it) and not passing it on, which I for sure have my suspicions it doesn’t.
Look at it this way, if Mr ‘X’ from the UK buys item ‘Y’ from Aliexpress and pays ‘Z’ amount of tax how on earth does any country know Mr ‘X’ ever even purchased in the first place, let alone how much tax he paid? The only way it could be checked is if Aliexpress submits the record of every sale to the HMRC and that is almost certainly not going to happen. Also despite paying said tax, the last few items I have oredered from Aliexpress turned up with a fake value on anyway, thus showing that I paid way less tax than I actually did!!
My guess is this, China tells the UK ‘we took ’£X’ much tax from the UK customers, here it is - if you don’t agree it’s correct….well try and do something about it lol!