Hi,

I just had a nice chat to a bloke who knows a thing or two about importing goods into the UK. I picked up some good tips, and some good advice to boot.

Anywho, one thing he mentioned to me was regarding brokering goods. He advised me that if I am going to broker goods then I MUST declare the full value of the order and not get the item sent as GIFT/Sample etc. as that is classed as tax avoidance (or Evasion, I cant remember which).

Thought I would just share this info with the forum so that members know what to put down when they are brokering their goods. Telling a potential customer that they 'may' be charged but you do your best to avoid these charges is not at all advisable.

It really made me think hard about brokering as the penalties for doing the above are quite harsh

Cheers

Dave

Seems to me people are misguided into thinking that if you but something down as a gift you will avoid paying any import duties , well this is not true , if customs check your package and find that the product is worth a lot of money you'll get charged import duties anyway , your best just telling the truth.

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Declaring it as a gift just gives you an extra £18 worth of allowance.

Under declaring the value of goods or miss stating their nature is tax evasion, avoidance is the legal practice of minimising your tax exposure through full use of allowances etc.

The punishments can be much more severe then just charging you what you would have been if you had been truthful, duty evasion is punishable by imprisonment.

In no way should you involve yourself in any form of tax invasion full stop.

Again to repeat what DSC said... that prison time is a possibility and simply not worth the 17-20% saving. Besides if your a broker then as long as you advertise that purchasing the item maybe subject to import tax and duties then you have nothing to worry about so long as your supplier abides by the same rules too.

We had a buyer 2 years ago who ordered burberry scarves from a supplier in Italy. The goods were advertised as authentic. The seller agreed to lower the price on the commercial invoice so the buyer would not have to pay high duties and taxes. He might have tried to claim a gift as well. I do not remember but the goods were flagged because of the low commercial value total was unrealistic. The goods were held in custom. Well the buyer became nervous the goods were fake so she began calling customs and asking questions about the authenticity. She got the investigation and when the goods were determined to be authentic, the commercial invoice was revised to reflect the real authentic value of the shipment. Well the buyer was furious since she had to pay the real duties and taxes on the shipment. I guess she wanted authentic goods without paying taxes and duties so she refused to accept the goods and proceeded to file a dispute with her credit card company for non delivery. Well that is one story of a million and one that I can share. Oh PS, she lost the credit card dispute since the goods cleared customs and it was only her that prevented the delivery.

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Last edited by JanesDeals; 16-02-2007 at 12:52 AM.

I don't understand why people want to avoid paying duty tax

Even when you pay the correct amount of duty, some products are still cheaper than UK distributor prices, depending on the price you're paying and probably the quantity purchased. So you can still make a decent profit.

I guess its greed and maybe prices people see on eBay of electronics, mp3 players etc. With the extra profit you make from paying less duty or no duty you pay more income tax anyway. Unless you don't pay tax as well, then you're in serious trouble!