I ship to the EU all the time. In particular, I use UPS for EU shipping, and they're efficient. Normally there's just a link on the tracking page where you can pay the customs charge which is equivalent to VAT plus a small handling fee of about 20 EUR.
So if 400 GBP for a machine, UPS charges you about 120 EUR.
Before Brexit, EU customers paid UK VAT 20%. Now they pay 0% UK VAT, and pay their own country's VAT. See:
@libreleah@nemobis I will have to pay 21% VAT on top of the customs clearance costs added to your bill. But if you indeed do not charge UK VAT, then the additional pain may be limited. Unlike my general experience with non-EU purchases.
@whvholst@nemobis Yeah so, basically, whatever the total price is during checkout: times it by 1.2 and that's the pre-Brexit price.
The post-Brexit tax is the pre-Brexit tax multiplied by1.05 (matching the dutch vat. I assume dutch, your name is dutch and you said 21% which is dutch vat) plus €20.
So, 400 GBP -> pre-brexit tax was 80 GBP.
Now it's 84 GBP, plus that handling fee, makes it about 100 GBP. Convert that into EUR (at today's rate, multiple of 1.17) and it makes 115 to 125 EUR.
@whvholst@nemobis The EU did something unprecedented in its history, in response to Brexit: it made trading easier, for low value items:
That handling fee would be a problem if what you're buying is £20.
Anything not exceeding 150 EUR has this rule: non-EU merchants can(must) sign up to the IOSS scheme; they charge your country's VAT rate during checkout, and file VAT in only 1 EU country. Before, you had to register in every EU country.
I deal in higher value so you pay VAT at the border.
@libreleah@whvholst IOSS works quite well in Finland, as long as the merchant remembers to write it somewhere on the package, otherwise it gets on hold. Some sellers don't even know they have IOSS because their platform takes care of it (e.g. eBay, AbeBooks). But if that happens you just enter the tracking code in the Tulli website, state how much VAT you've already paid etc., and the packet gets released without fees.
@whvholst@nemobis one day maybe they'll have another lightbulb moment and make that the case for all goods, regardless of value. Then I'd just register for VAT in some eastern european country (where costs are lower) and charge dutch, german, spanish, french VAT, you name it, at checkout.
But yeah, the current rules do add like 2-3 days delay in customs. But the way things work is pretty efficient. I only use good couriers, they do it all for you. You just pay VAT and it arrives, no problem.
@libreleah@whvholst I noticed there are quite a few companies offering this kind of intermediation, like https://www.euify.eu/faq. It seems to work fine but if something goes wrong you have two companies to deal with instead of one. So indeed it would be better to simplify in such a way that you can handle it directly.
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