Just been arse raped by good old customs and excise

[kieatky]

Well, took delivery of a rather nice afa graded R2 pop up this morning. Purchased from BriansToys (yeah I know, very overpriced ). I knew I was gonna get hit with a customs charge but certainly was not expecting to fork out £94 !!!! thieving barstewards

And to make matters worse, I've still got another 2 parcels on route from the states (not quite as pricey as R2 thanfully)

 

[x-pack]

Shite!!

That's insane. I got hit with a customs bill for around £20 for three MOCs this years. Don't know where the amount you've been charged has come from.

 

[jedi_masters]

Ring Customs and ask them to check it. We had a parcel come into the office a few weeks back that was basically a lump of gold. Weighed about 2kg. Custom charge on it was £230 but the woman who's it was had already been on the phone and said she had worked it out to be £70. They changed the charge to £70 and admitted it was an error.

So unless your MOC cost more than 2kg of gold I would get it checked.

 

[kieatky]

Yeah I agree the charge is seriously over the top, infact almost a third of the value of the figure. Think I'll visit the gov web site see what the true cost should be.

 

[Spookedhippie]

That is ludicrous! I'd definitely speak to them

 

[kieatky]

The biggest part of the charge was the VAT (roughly £76) then there was a couple of other fees such as handling etc. Don't get me wrong the figure is a thing of beauty, but considering it's cost me almost £400 it should be bloody made from solid gold !!! :lol:

 

[mumbo]

ouch :shock:

 

[Dark Sith Lord]

WOW That's ridiculous :shock:

 

[livewire]

Import duty should be 4.7% and 20% vat according to this?
http://www.dutycalculator.com/hs-code-duty-rate-import-restrictions/950300/toys/9503.00.0090/9503.00.4100/1472/

 

[jasdev999]

Ring Customs and ask them to check it. We had a parcel come into the office a few weeks back that was basically a lump of gold. Weighed about 2kg. Custom charge on it was £230 but the woman who's it was had already been on the phone and said she had worked it out to be £70. They changed the charge to £70 and admitted it was an error.

So unless your MOC cost more than 2kg of gold I would get it checked.

I had to fork out £25 for MOCs worth USD120. Would you be able to share the phone number for customs as I had a look and it is all very confusiing. Thanks

 

[benny100]

And the prize for the best topic title goes to... Ha, bad luck there, it's really shitty getting bent over by customs.

 

[Jez]

I hope you get it sorted, thats mental!

 

[jedi_masters]

Ring Customs and ask them to check it. We had a parcel come into the office a few weeks back that was basically a lump of gold. Weighed about 2kg. Custom charge on it was £230 but the woman who's it was had already been on the phone and said she had worked it out to be £70. They changed the charge to £70 and admitted it was an error.

So unless your MOC cost more than 2kg of gold I would get it checked.

I had to fork out £25 for MOCs worth USD120. Would you be able to share the phone number for customs as I had a look and it is all very confusiing. Thanks

Hi jasdev999

Yea no problem, I will have a look at one of the customs labels tomorrow and get the number for you. Although the charges are **** and the handling fee doesn't help, from what ive heard they are quite helpful and if the charge is wrong they will correct it. Same as when using the code for vintage toys.

Leave it with me mate and I will PM you tomorrow.

 

[kieatky]

Live and learn I suppose. Gonna have to grin and bear it, especially as I've got a 'new in box' ROTJ endor scene AT AT arriving in the next week or so. The charges aren't going to be as high, but I'm still expecting to have to fork out another £60 or so

 

[jedisearcher]

It's so complicated, you'd think the Government is trying to rip us off :lol:

The HMRC code you want is: 9705000090. For us it's not what you're importing (toys), but the age of the item (you need to refer to your items as Collectables and make sure HMRC know the age). I think (might not be 100% correct) that VAT isn't fully chargeable on older collectables and drops from 20% to 5%. Don't think you pay the Import tax either. So your bill will could drop from £75 or so to about £20.

The best page is this one I think:

http://search2.hmrc.gov.uk/kb5/hmrc/contactus/view.page?record=iQ9MFQAxnZk

 

[timbo72]

Got my loose graded Ledi B wing pilot from Brians toys and he would not put $20 as the total charge,so he put $151 and i got charged £25.20

:-(

 

[rob71]

Pretty lucky over here as they only charge on imports when the tax comes to around NZ$60 (so around £200 or nz$400 including shipping). Mind you there is talk of us adopting the UK model :roll:

I've managed to avoid customs so far by only buying ungraded MOCs and getting them sent straight to the AFA - AFA then include paperwork saying that they are returning your own items rather than it being a new purchase.

 

[Frunkstar]

Hope this will help you, I just cut & paste this from an earlier post I did some time back -

Right after a rather contrived call to HMRC I have had success!

If importing SW toys & they confirm to the below criteria they will qualify for the 5% import tax bracket -

Must be -

30 years old
In original packaging :?
& no longer in production

If so you can add this to your parcel & (in theory & with an insane amount of luck) you will only get charged the lower Tax bracket of 5%

commodity code 9705000090

Failing this & they do charge you, you WILL qualify to make a claim for the over tax via claim form BOR286 which you can download & print @ - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk

I hope this will help others out & that I get my monies back, about bloody time for a victory for us collectors Vs the customs.

 

[Jez]

Very helpful post Frank, you are a star

 

[tiefighterboy]

I always mark stuff as "Action Figures" with a value below $30 (unless the package is huge and heavy) and it is always a gift. I hope this helps out all those I have sent things along the way. **** the system.