Today’s shipment of the day warrants a blog post. It is the phenomenal Mindflex game. Apologies if we are a bit late to the game here and you had heard of it before, but we were blown away by this game. The good news is that it is import duty free!

Happy bundling!

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 –

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 there

The Duty Calculator is live now for a bit over two months. As per today, we have 5325 registered users, who performed in total 7459 calculations. Since launch, we have expanded the products that the Duty Calculator covers, for example mobile phones and cars. We have improved the category structure so it is easier for our users to find the products. Also we added several countries that you can import to. The Duty Calculator now covers all Euro countries, the UK and Sweden. We are working hard to add the remaining EU countries.

The last time I wrote about the query statistics I promised to write a bit more about what our users are importing from China. Unsurprisingly, the top import categories are consumer electronics, clothing and accessories, sporting equipment and shoes.

Aside from the popular queries on finding the import duty & VAT on products like the Samsung i900, Quad band HTC T3232 Smart phone, the Scotty Cameron putters and Callaway FT-I drivers, the Dell 1330, Sony Vaio laptops and Dreambox satellite receivers, we had some interesting items:

- Sciphone (the best iPhone clone in the market, apparently)
- Zorb ball (don’t try this at home)
- Photovoltaic cell arrays (here is more info on that)
- Karaoke Santa Claus (yes, yes, you need one for Christmas)
- Swim spa and a single sit in kayak
- A real London taxi!

I was surprised to find out that the London taxis are actually made in China. There were some other queries that caused the same reaction, for example Christian Louboutin pumps. Not sure what the story is there.

Finally, again, the Uggs popped up, alongside Ausiebum. This time imported from China though, instead of Australia. I still don’t get it.

Take care, and happy bundling

Andre

Hi there -

The Duty Calculator has been live for a bit over a month now. So far we have 3142 registered users who did 4047 calculations. We only target UK based users for now. Lets have a look what our users are importing from where.

Our users are buying mostly from the USA, China and Hong Kong. Those countries cover over 80% of the calculations. The most popular categories are audio, video & photography equipment, clothing, car parts, musical instruments and jewelry.

Popular products from the USA this month are bridesmaid dresses and prom dresses, the Washburn WI420 guitar, and the Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar, the Earth Calm Galaxy gem, many lens kits for digital cameras, for example the Canon EF 70-300mm lens bundle , car parts like exhausts and speed transmissions and many, many, many golf clubs.

Another interesting point was the many calculations for importing Uggs from Australia. I thought that Uggs were over by now, especially in the summer. I guess not.

Next time I’ll tell you a bit more about what people are buying from China.

Happy bundling

Andre