It's all about volume. Low FOB prices look attractive but once you add all the other charges it can almost double your original estimated landed price.

You need to order more items, negotiate better shipping prices and then your additional costs per unit will be reduced.

You competitors may be bringing the items in to the UK in large quantities and by sea. Therefore their additional costs maybe nearer 15% (excluding the VAT as they may claim that back).

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Originally Posted by katietuesday

Also, I had another package which came from Thailand about a year ago. This was for personal use, not business. The Thai seller stated that the package was worth less that it was - which is probably why I never paid Duty or VAT.Should I now tell someone about this?

VAT is a consumer tax not a business tax. Personal use or not you have to pay it.

thanks, but how do I pay the VAT on something that no-one has contacted me about?

Contact customs. It's up to you to make sure you obey the law. Ignorance is not an excuse.

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Last edited by D M; 11-08-2008 at 01:31 PM.

i'm not being ignorant. just asking a question

Originally Posted by katietuesday

Hi All

We buy a particular product at approx £40 from China.
We sell for £80/£90.
We incorporate P&P in our price of £80/£90 - so the customer doesnt pay for this.

We pay postage and packaging costs from China, and when the package comes the Chinese say that the product is of very low value.

so my question! we dont earn enough/or want/need to be VAT registered. However, I need to do a tax return. Do I NEED to declare that i've imported goods from China? will anyone ever know? it just means we will have to bump up our price which would not be good. any ideas on how much the tax would be?

thank you, Kitty

Hi Katie,

To the bset of my knowledge, any VAT registered company MUST charge you VAT where applicable. If you are not VAT registered you cannot claim any VAT amounts back. Furthermore you are obviously not allowed to charge VAT.

As for importing, I run a courier company and we are heavily involved in international consigments for both imports & exports.

Here are a few pointers:

Alot of exporters from China will put a nominal amount on goods coming in in order to try and dodge the customs radar. More often than not they will get away with small single items, however on heavier / more valuable goods it's a very dodgy game to play.
For example, if they sent in 50 polo shirts with a declared value of just £25.00 it's likely to get spotted. If customs deem it to be a false declaration the shipper will be liable to pay a fine, and the goods may well be destroyed. Obviously if you have paid for them you would be pretty devastated, and would have no come back at all!

As for the personal shipment forget all about it. It states personal, and that's what it is. The goods have no commercial value for re-sale so therefore there is no duty to pay.

When importing you are often better to import in bulk, although you will have to pay duty you are only paying for one courier cost into the UK, and this often becomes more cost effective.

TIf you would like furter info let me know, I'll be glad to help (PS this is not a sales pitch)!
This IS NOT a sales pitch, however if you would like some more indepth advice about importing drop me a message with some contact details and I'll happily help. I have to say £70.00 sounds quite alot for a small ship

thanks very much for that. Its just hard for me to get my head around what my actual cost of buying a product is. As someone said the prices seem cheap (well, not really as we pay a fair and I would say fairly high price for what we buy). Does my product actually cost £40, £50, £80?!! when I figure this out I will know what to charge! I will contact re: shipping, thanks again.

Originally Posted by bowring1873

As for the personal shipment forget all about it. It states personal, and that's what it is. The goods have no commercial value for re-sale so therefore there is no duty to pay.

It wasn't a 'personal shipment' but a brand new item from a thai seller.

Originally Posted by katietuesday

i'm not being ignorant. just asking a question

Surely the reason you asked the question is because you were ignorant of the answer?

welcome to the world of importing!

You have made the classic error of not knowing what you are doing! This is something many before you have faced and many after will also face!

once bitten, twice shy, I hope.

As for the ignorance somment, i do not think DM ws being rude. Ig the VAT man kicks your door down and sees something dodgy, saying 'I didnt know' will not be accepted!