US Companies not selling to the UK

[Mike]

As a result of no longer being in the EU, anyone outside the UK selling to the UK has to collect the VAT themselves and then pay it back to HMRC, this requires overseas companies becoming VAT registered and so on.
Due to the extra work this has created, many US based companies have suspended sales to the UK whilst they figure this out, others have simply cut their losses and stopped supplying the UK.

This is a comment on the availability of stock from certain hobby companies, not a political post.

(Details here for those that it)

[Thuseld]

Are we aware of the impact on sending normal, personal packages? My brother lives in the USA and I generally get things shipped to him, and he sends them here. Although, actually he often does it via work mail, so that might be impacted.

Experiments here: http://inexperiencedmodelmaker.blogspot.co.uk/

Tranquil Stars updates: https://tranquilstars.wordpress.com

[Mike]

Details in the link.
🙂

[Grimheart]

Such a retarded scheme…….. It basically forces non uk small sellers into 3 choices:

1. stop selling to the UK as registering and maintaining a UK Vat account is stupid.
2. Only sell using an online market place as the burden then passes to them.
3. Sell to the UK but insist on minimum order value of £135 as then normal import vat applies that the customer has to deal with (like previously)

Not sure why the hell this had to change, are our Customs so incapable of collecting Vat on small parcels under £135?

Sure I understand there was probably a fair bit of under-declaration fraud going on with these small items but in gov money terms that would be absolutely insignificant otherwise they would simply employ more customs officers to check parcels.

Good luck to any non UK businesses out there, going to miss some of you!

Regards

Stephen

Interest include 6mm WW2, 6mm SciFi, 30mm Old West, DropFleet, Warlords Exterminate and others!

[Deleted User]

I wonder how large of a market the UK is to the world wide hobby industry? Maybe this was the reason for the huge price rise in 1/6000 ships on Magistermillitum. It could mean more UK sellers and buiness to make up for overseas suppliers. Or maybe everyone will have to go back to buying GW flocks, grit and paint again.

How does the new rules (not this one specifically) affect UK companies selling outside the island?

[Mike]

So my own Crom’s Anvil products sold to the EU at the shown price.

Now the customer has to pay TAX at their local rate when it arrives there.
So my own products are now more expensive to buy outside the UK.

[Joerg Bender]

Unfortunate news for our friends in the UK:

[Deleted User]

Time to move I guess. Or buy a 3d printer.

[Guy Farrish]

I believe this situation (exporting companies being responsible for collecting VAT) will apply to UK sellers into the EU from 1 July 2021. The scheme was EU wide and destined to be introduced on 1 January 2021. We went ahead despite leaving the EU while the EU have postponed it for 6 months.

[Mr. Average]

How very strange. Is it some kind of balance of trade scheme? Positively mercantilistic. I do hope it won’t affect exportation from the UK to the US. At least we can still buy your products I hope.

[deephorse]

I will soon be placing an order with an Australian seller that I’ve bought from before.  I can’t imagine for one moment that he will be aware of these regulations, let alone be ready to comply with them.  So what will happen to my purchase when it reaches these shores?  Does HMRC really expect the myriad of small businesses around the world to know about this?  What was wrong with the old system where I paid the VAT on stuff that I bought from overseas?

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[Not Connard Sage]

Omega watches have put their UK prices up, and Switzerland’s not even in the EU.

I knew I should have bought that bloody Speedy before Christmas

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[willz]

I never bought anything thing from America as I was happy to pay import duties but not the rip off money the Post Office charged to open my parcel, I could never get any information from HMRC as why this was the case.  So now it looks it will be the same from Europe?  Very sad for all people and business’s in this supposedly free world???.  Ho hum I am sure we will be able to spend all our wargame money on lots of shinny’s in the UK or is there going to be a trade in smuggling wargame related items from Europe / America.

[Mike Headden]

“Five-and-twenty ponies trotting through the dark,
Figures for the parson, brushes for the clerk”

🙂 🙂 🙂

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Mike]

Mike Headden wrote:

“Five-and-twenty ponies trotting through the dark,
Figures for the parson, brushes for the clerk”

😀

[deephorse]

I’d better hope that my parcel washes up on some beach in Cornwall then.

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[Cerdic]

So how do they propose to enforce this?

If, for example, Snake Boots Figures of Arkansas sell me twenty quids worth of stuff and they can’t be arsed to get VAT registered, what happens? How is the package identified as having VAT owing? Is the package impounded? Is a bill from HMRC sent stateside? Or a crack team of HMRC enforcers? What about the poor old UK customer who has shelled out for stuff and not received it through no fault of their own?

http://28mmreview.blogspot.co.uk

[Mr. Average]

That’s the real trick isn’t it? How do you enforce your tax regime on a citizen of a country who is not subject to your laws? But either way, I’m sure time will tell.

[Gaz]

Deleted User wrote:

How does the new rules (not this one specifically) affect UK companies selling outside the island?

I’ve made two purchases from the UK since Jan 1st, one from an Ebay seller, one from Antediluvian. Both were below £25 and arrived in Dublin quickly and without any fuss or additional charges from Irish customs. Both were clearly labelled for customs. Once I keep my orders small, I don’t think I’ll notice any difference.

[MartinR]

I guess it will be the same lottery as buying stuff from China. If you are lucky it sails through customs etc without a hitch, if unlucky, it sits in an HMRC warehouse outside Coventry for six weeks and eventually turns up, possibly with tax to pay.

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[willz]

deephorse wrote:

I’d better hope that my parcel washes up on some beach in Cornwall then.

I can just see it now thousands of people (non wargamers) descending on a Cornish beach to loot it, after a container ship of wargame related items loses several of its containers  Only to be disappointed with the items they recover and end up throwing them back.

[Phil Dutré]

Welcome to the pre-single-market world 😉

I’m old enough to remember I had to go to a customs office (I live in Belgium) to collect my packages that came from abroad and pay import taxes. And yes, sometimes something came through undetected, but usually not from companies. Every package normally needs a label declaring its value etc.

I’m not completely familiar with all new rules when ordering something from the UK now, but I have decided not to order anything from the UK for the coming months and wait it out till the dust settles. And yes, that also means I will probably start looking for alternatives and wargaming manufacturers this side of the channel.

As has been said numerous times, big multinational companies can handle these sort of changes. Small companies will pay the price.

[Mike]

Cerdic wrote:

What about the poor old UK customer who has shelled out for stuff and not received it through no fault of their own?

There are some US companies I know of that are reluctant/refusing to do it.
I would not order from such a company myself, way too risky especially as the US has no equivalent of the Consumer Contracts Regulations as far as I know?

[Geof Downton]

You may have some protection via your payment method.

One who puts on his armour should not boast like one who takes it off.
Ahab, King of Israel; 1 Kings 20:11

[vexillia]

The rules for parcels sent to the EU will change on July 01.  Currently small parcels are cover by “small consignment relief”  but this will end.  You have been warned.

Gaz wrote:

I’ve made two purchases from the UK since Jan 1st, one from an Ebay seller, one from Antediluvian. Both were below £25 and arrived in Dublin quickly and without any fuss or additional charges from Irish customs. Both were clearly labelled for customs. Once I keep my orders small, I don’t think I’ll notice any difference.

Plus eBay will start to add VAT automatically for EU buyers.

Martin Stephenson

[Cerdic]

Phil Dutré wrote:

Welcome to the pre-single-market world I’m old enough to remember I had to go to a customs office (I live in Belgium) to collect my packages that came from abroad and pay import taxes. And yes, sometimes something came through undetected, but usually not from companies. Every package normally needs a label declaring its value etc. I’m not completely familiar with all new rules when ordering something from the UK now, but I have decided not to order anything from the UK for the coming months and wait it out till the dust settles. And yes, that also means I will probably start looking for alternatives and wargaming manufacturers this side of the channel. As has been said numerous times, big multinational companies can handle these sort of changes. Small companies will pay the price.

Buying stuff from around the world and paying some form of extra charge is something that a lot of people are already familiar with. My son and daughter both buy non-wargaming bits and bobs from the US, and a bloke I know buys retro electronic parts from Japan and China. They pay the extra when the package turns up.

The difference with this new VAT regulation is that the onus is placed on the supplier on the other side of the world to pay, not the consumer. The effect is that small companies are discouraged from selling direct to customers in Britain and the EU ( don’t forget, this is an EU regulation that Britain has implemented early).

This appears to be a way of handing even more power over to Amazon and EBay…

http://28mmreview.blogspot.co.uk

[Guy Farrish]

Online Market Places eg Amazon and Ebay are now responsible for collecting and accounting for VAT on sales into UK. This may give sellers on their sites some advantage – have to see how easy it is vice direct selling and registration – but it designed to close a large revenue loss via uncollected VAT on imports under the old convoluted system of exemptions and collection via Royal Mail on delivery to the buyer.

[John D Salt]

“The changes will not apply to consignments of goods containing excise goods”

Presumably people who prefer to stick to the old scheme, whatever it was, can do so by including a miniature bottle of booze in each consignment.

All the best,

John.

[Mr. Average]

That may be it – it may be that this is primarily a means to tax large importers, but the letter of the rule is just snaring a lot of small retailers.  They can stop large shipments from heavy importers, but small packages to individual buyers will probably never be bothered with.

[Guy Farrish]

I think it is the large number of small (below £135) parcels they are after.

The big stuff they got. It was the millions of small items that were seen as losing revenue and disadvantaging EU (and now UK) sellers.

[Oh no….]

The reason the Post Office can charge you for collecting any VAT and import duty on your parcel is that the UK governments have cut nearly all its Customs staff at the parcel post depots that dealt with imported post. The “task” of collecting any duties and taxes was then “farmed out” in a move reminiscent of the middle ages. Preventive measures now “probably” consist of a parcel maybe going through an x-ray machine, maybe a search dog going around the parcels and packets, or occasionally a team on bods doing a “spot check” on the same. Not very satisfactory really.

The current law seems ill thought through but we’ve come to expect that sort of thing.

 

[Norm S]

Have I got this right?

If you are say a private individual in the UK and you buy something sourced in America, then if you buy that from a UK supplier / importer that is VAT registered here, then all of this will be invisible and seamless …. but if you order direct as an individual from the states, then you hit the problems outlined above?

If so, it strikes me that the situation should help the UK stores / distributers as they capture the home market, who previously might have ordered direct from the States for pre-publish discounts.

Does the same thing harm UK manufacturers (say Perry’s) trying to export, which are bought globally?

[Keith Barker]

Norm S wrote:

Does the same thing harm UK manufacturers (say Perry’s) trying to export, which are bought globally?

See my recent post: https://www.thewargameswebsite.com/forums/topic/can-someone-explain-vat-to-me/

Living abroad, I will have to pay local VAT when I import from UK. Some UK manufacturers deduct 20% (UK VAT) when exporting, others don’t.

I expect I will be looking favorably at those that do deduct 20%. The other UK manufacturers have just had a price rise of 25% so yes I think it will harm them.

 

[Mr. Average]

From the USA perspective, we can buy your products VAT free because the USA does not have VAT, it has sales and excise taxes levied by sovereign States and not by the Federal Government, and so depending on your State you are very probably exempt from paying it on the quantities of merchandise an individual is likely to buy.  Which is the same as it has ever been.  However, if UK subjects want to buy American products, you become liable for UK VAT once it enters the UK.  So it’s kind of an attempt at a protective tariff.

Does it sound like I have that right?

[Tony Hughes]

Mr.Average – most small producers in the UK do not pay VAT so can’t deduct it. Another blow for the small businesses that all governments seem to ignore.

It isn’t a ‘protective tariff’ in any way, shape or form. We pay VAT on most goods that we use in the UK whether produced locally or imported. Not applying that tax to imports would be favouring imports over domestic produce – that isn’t protectionism at all.

 

[Mr. Average]

Oh, I see.  It’s easy to forget that we’re talking about a more broadly assigned tax.

[Guy Farrish]

It is most decidedly however an attempt to recover more revenue and protect UK producers/sellers by closing  what was seen (by the EU) as a loophole that allowed a lot of imported goods to come in and miss VAT due (under £15 was okay but many packages over the £15 but below the import tax threshold of £135 slipped through as well).

The theory is the VAT is no longer accountable and due on arrival in the UK but at the point of sale in the sellers country.

The EU will implement the original, similar, provisions on 1 July.

[Author]

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