Do I have to pay tax if I order stuff from UK?

[graceheungheung]

Hi all,

the custom told me if imports from EU to another EU, is tax free.

Is UK considered as in EU? some say yes and some says no....

[Rosamunda]

I'm not sure. Didn't England opt out? Maybe Scotland is still in. Or was it the other way around?




NO..... there is no import tax from the UK. And yes, the UK (but not including the Channel Islands) is in the EU.

But yes, you will probably be invoiced VAT (either at the UK rate or the Finnish rate depending on the company you are ordering from and their annual turnover with Finland).

[biscayne]

I just ordered and received a pair of wellies from England, and didn't pay any tax. They didn't mention anything about VAT

[Rosamunda]

I think there have been posts about this before.

There is no import duty within the EU.

VAT rates vary from country to country. If you order a book from Amazon UK, they charge you 8% VAT which is the Finnish rate (books are zero-rated in the UK). This is because Amazon does a ton of business with Finland so they have to register for VAT with Finland. By the way, the Book Depository is now adding 8% VAT to books it ships to Finland also. The last delivery I received (last week) was the first one where I have been invoiced VAT. Presumably its 2009 turnover with Finland exceeded the threshold.

So, depending on where you bought the boots in the UK you may or may not pay VAT. Basically it depends on the amount of business that company does with Finland. I guess most on-line stores just invoice you the RRP including VAT (ie at the UK rate), because that is how their invoicing systems work.

In theory, if you buy something VAT free from within the EU you should declare and pay VAT in Finland. But in practice I don't see how that works.

[riku2]

I just ordered and received a pair of wellies from England, and didn't pay any tax. They didn't mention anything about VAT

retailers always charge the vat and it's only when the customer is in a non eu country do they remove it.
even if you run your own business you still pay the vat on things you buy. later on when you file your vat return and pay the vat you've collected from your customers then you remove the vat you paid out (eg on supplies and equipment you bought), in this way the wellies from england would be vat free if you used them as part of your business, but from the shop's point of view thats of no interest to them. they charge vat to all customers. some shops even advertise the price before vat since as a business customer that's really the cost to you, but you'd actually pay the amount+vat like end consumers would.

what complicates things here is that the vat rate differs on different items. most famously books have 0% vat rate in the UK.

and then you can start to consider the channel islands where their entire VAT rate is 0% and DVD's and things bought from there don't have VAT. but the CI are not counted as part of the EU tax zone and on those things you "should" pay VAT at the finnish rate when they're imported, it's just that the tax authority in finland doesn't bother with small value items.

[jtammilehto]

1. Many companies will remove VAT if you give your company's VAT number -- FI-xxxxxxxxxxxxx --
or refund it later (Amazon UK does that).

2. The rule in EU is that if customs and/or VAT does not exceed 10 euro - no customs and/or VAT will be charged regardless of whether from a EU or non-EU country (unless you are buying from someone already registered with Finnish VAT office because of volumes sold to Finland). Of course individual countries can also decide on their own that if it is only a bit more than that - then they may not bother. It can be quite capricious - but anyhow the 10 euro should hold regardless.

(Would really wonder about the general awareness of someone saying the UK was not in the EU - the original question seemed to be saying there were 'some' - the UK has only belonged for 37 years!)