Hi All -

Today we passed the landmark of 10,000 registered users for the Duty Calculator! In total our users have done 15,776 calculations since the launch in late April. One of the most popular items, to our surprise, was the UGG boot.

So why are people so crazy about importing UGG boots? Simple. In the USA they retail at the official UGG online store for $180 (approx. £110), in the UK they retail for £195 including shipping and in Australia they retail for £79 including free world wide shipping! Same boots, very different prices.

Now, if you import your UGGs from Australia, you would incur no duty as the value of the boots is less than £150 (if the value would be over £150, the duty rate on UGGs would be 17%), however, you will have to fork over £11.85 for VAT. This means you can have the boots at your doorstep for a cool £90.85, a saving of more than £100!

Nice one!

Happy bundling

Andre

PS The official customs code for UGGs is 6405 9010 00. Have a look at the TARIC site and the classifying description and you understand why the Duty Calculator makes your life so easy!

Hi all -

Amidst all the flurry of the Bundle Box launch, Pesh finally managed to upload our iPhone app for the Duty Calculator. We followed each required step with great care, as outlined in Apple’s 107-page PDF on submitting your app to the apps store. Now the agonizing wait has begun. Some say it can take weeks, some say it can take months… We can only hope it will be faster than that!

Nice one Pesh!

Happy bundling

Andre

Hi All -

Yesterday we migrated the Duty Calculator to a new server. We felt that browsing speed is very important to our users and therefore we decided to upgrade our server.

We went out and got a mighty fine server provided by Rackspace. The results are absolutely stunning, sooooooo fast. Duty calculations at warp speed! Check it out for yourself and knock yourself out at www.dutycalculator.com

Apologies for being offline for a couple of hours yesterday because of the migration.

Happy bundling

Andre

Hi all –

We get around 100 queries per week on the Duty Calculator of people calculating the duty and VAT due when importing a car or motorbike. Most cars are imported from the USA and Japan. The cars that are imported are a mix of collector cars (we had a Ford GT), cars that are simply not available in the UK, for example the Infinity FX35 or cars where there is pure price arbitrage, for example the Nissan 370z.

Almost 20% of the queries relate to intra-EU trade of cars. This is not surprising as Duty & VAT regulation for importing cars within the EU is a complicated matter.

Lets start with duty. In general there is no import duty due when importing a car from another EU member state. There are two exceptions: Portugal and Cyprus do levy an import duty on cars from within the EU.

Then there is VAT. In the EU most goods are charged with VAT in the country in which they are purchased. However for a new car, VAT will be due in the member state of destination if the car is new, or the car is sold to a customer who intends to take it to another EU member state.

A new car means here, that less than 6 months have elapsed since the date of its first entry into service or it has, since its first entry into service, travelled under its own power for more than 6000km. If the car is not new, you will not have to pay VAT if you have paid VAT on its purchase in the EU member state of supply.

Plenty more information on this you can find in the Duty Calculator FAQ and the HMRC Notice 728.

Happy bundling

Andre

Hi all -

We get a lot of queries for iPhones, iTouches and iPods on the Duty Calculator. People are importing them primarily from China, USA and Australia.

Mobile phones have no import duty, when you import them into the EU, from anywhere in the world. This applies also to the iPhone, even though it has advanced computing and video recording capabilities. What matters is that its primary use is to call people.

For the iTouches and iPods this is different. A simple iPod without video capability carries an import duty rate of 2%. The iTouch however, carries a duty rate of 13.2%, because it has video capabilities. I wonder what happens to this rate when skyping via your iTouch takes off.

All iPhones, iTouches and Ipods are subject to import VAT of 15%.

Happy bundling

Andre