Import duty

The law is messed up! Since the purchased item was originally manufactured in the UK there shouldn't be any more import taxes imposed on it! I am just as angry as you are. I hate it when the "law" assumes we are idiots.

Regards...

I've always been lucky with import duty with the post, never paid any even with items costing over £200! Just got he seller either to send as a gift or adjust the valuation on the C2N form. But yeah, what a bunch of f**%~rs! Bit like the inland revenue. dark ally on a dark night springs to mind.

I've been hit many times with completely unjustifiable taxes and import duty. If you avoid it, it is just luck. Declaring as a gift really means little, as does reducing the declared value. HM Customs have pretty much carte blanche over what they charge. If they decide it's a genuine gift, brilliant. If they believe the valuation, brilliant. But they're quite entitled to ignore all this and put their own valuation on it. And remember if the value is declared low and it goes missing any insurance you have is only going to cover the low value.
I've appealed a couple of times and got dismissed out of hand. It's completely wrong.

I explained to a Polish friend that he would be ill-advised to mess with a Gov't agency in regards of paying what the said agency wanted ... The trouble is that they remain a branch of the law and it is hardly a human rights issue is it?

Of course sometimes it seems, and quite probably is unfair, but you need a lot of time and resources to win, even if it seems to you justified ...

ATB from George

Can you prove that you paid VAT 20 years ago? Can you prove that when you moved to Asia that the VAT wasn't refunded?

Isn't the UK basically bankrupt and needs all of the revenue it can get?

I have had a lot of import duty slapped on things I have either ordered for work, or buying CDs & DVDs.

I was particularly irked when I ordered a couple of Peter Greenaway box sets from Japan and was charged a hefty amount for the privilege of watching the work of one the Britain's most inventive directors, when his work was not available in this country, but there was endless Hollywood trash available.

On another occasion I ordered a CD replica gatefold cover from Mexico. Customs managed to run a knife across the cover when opening the package. A month later I was charged the full price of the purchase as CD. Be warned in Mexico they often use the $ sign for pesos, so as the postage was $110 (pesos), about 10% of the US $, I was charged at the US value. I appealed and was let off the cost as the item was damaged goods, damaged by customs. I could have asked the supplier to replace it, but as one copy had already gone missing in the post, I decided they had had enough of a pain from one sale.

I had £800 charged on a set of RAID drives that cost $2,400, which at the time must have been around 50% of the value.

They also tried to charge me for the value of a hard drive I was sent from India with files for a film I was working on. They asked for proof that I had returned the disc with the finished shots on it. Thankfully I had that, but I did ask them why they thought someone would be sending a used hard drive from a film studio in India to England.

I also remember reading that in the 90's Brian Eno bought a copy of Mishima's (Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence) film 'Ai No Corrida' (In the Realm of the Senses) in which the sex acts were not simulated. The film had received a general/limited release in the UK the year before, but customs confiscated it on grounds of obscenity. I saw the film and can say it is not obscene, painfully boring, but not obscene.

They are a law unto themselves, or legalised thieves, or both. Be very aware that they play fast and loose with the value of good when listed in foreign currency.