Originally posted by Trawlerman Despite having paid for the item in full at the time of purchase I was landed with a 60 pounds / 120 dollar customs charge for the item and had to pay it in full before the item would be released to me. This camera was SECOND HAND, i.e it had been used before and came without instructions or box.
Although I have been hit by this before and was as pissed off as you are now, there is nothing abnormal or sinister about paying duty and VAT on imports. There is no connection whatsoever to your having paid in full at the time of purchase or not, or the item being new or second hand. Any import into the EU of items over a certain minimum value from a so-called 3rd country, in this case the US, goes through Customs clearance. Probably the declared value was put on the package by the seller.
Camera's (non-digital SLR's) fall under tariff heading 90065100 and carry a 4.2% duty rate plus whatever the VAT rate is in the UK.
Quote: I have now just purchased an accessory for this camera - the PENTAX BG-10 Grip - at a cost of approximately 60 pounds / 120 dollars. Once again it was purchased from a private seller in the US as I could not source one from a UK supplier due to it being discontinued and extremely rare on the second hand market. Once again, the item is SECOND HAND and to my dismay I have been charged 18 pounds / 36 dollars for this item.
Again, with sympathy to your plight, this is totally normal. Tariff heading here is 90069100 and the duty rate is slightly less at 3.7%
Quote: I feel it is highly unfair to charge people import duty for goods that they have purchased out of the country and especially unfair when they are Second Hand items that are unavailable to purchase in this country. Charging VAT on these items is tantamount to daylight robbery.
Why is that so? Were you to buy a secondhand item from a Highstreet store in the UK, you would not think twice about the VAT appearing on the sales slip. VAT is not uniquely charged on imports. VAT is charged on every purchase of goods and/or services.
Whether you think VAT is better or worse than other sales tax systems is beside the point.
Quote: I know there's nothing I can do about as the Customs & Excise people are a law unto themselves but if I could have bought it here I would have. These extra charges are crippling me and are unwanted as it's costly enough to buy the camera gear in the first place.
That is an unfair and unqualified statement if I ever saw one. I make a living out of proving the Customs wrong at times, making sure my company pays the "lowest legal rate". UK Customs are no different from the Dutch (where I live), Luxembourg (where I work) or other EU members (where I carry responsability. Come to think of it, just about any country I know by name, in- and outside the EU, is a signatory to the WCO. (World Customs Organization)
Apart from that, both the Tariff and the rules are on Internet. The UK tax authorities are known to have a particularly good, consumer-directed, website.
The Customs rules throughout the world are remarkably similar, if not identical, and differ only in tiny details.
When ordering from another country, one needs to take these charges into account and also include the handling and clearance charges which typically do not come from Customs, but from the Postal services or a forwarder/shipping company.
Mike