Brexit Update

[Leon]

Brexit Update

From 1st January 2021 there will be changes to the ordering process that some of our customers will need to be aware of.  Please note that this only affects customers in the EU, there are no changes at all for people outside of the EU.

1. Firstly, EU customers will no longer pay UK VAT (20%) on their orders.  This will reduce the price of our standard packs from £5.50 to £4.58 instead.

2. EU customers will now pay the VAT of their own country when the package arrives in their country, similar to how you would currently receive an international package (eg. from the USA or Australia).

3. You may have to pay a handling fee to your own Customs department, but this will vary from country to country.  From experience, not all packages are caught by the customs people so some customers might find that the package arrives without any charges at all.

4. All of this may change again on July 1st when the EU's planned VAT OSS system comes in.  At this point we would start charging you the correct VAT for your country as part of your order and you would not have to pay any internal VAT charges or handling fees before you receive your package.

5. There will be no changes to our shipping rates at this time, we will hold these until we can see what increases are put in place by the various postal services.


If there's any questions then let me know, but please don't start getting into a political rants about this.  It's happened now so we'll all just have to wait and see what happens over the coming months.  No matter what the people in suits decide, we'll still be making little soldiers and posting them out to people all over the world!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

 
Good luck all

[fsn]

Thanks Leon.

Good to know.

[sean66]

Thanks Leon
start looking at my next order
:- 20% off nice. Germany has 19% tax so wonder what their Handling fees will be.
Knowing my luck Germans are usually quite proficient so my parcels will be caught 
Regards
Sean

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Thanks kid !

[Orcs]

Thanks Leon
start looking at my next order
:- 20% off nice. Germany has 19% tax so wonder what their Handling fees will be.
Knowing my luck Germans are usually quite proficient so my parcels will be caught 
Regards
Sean

Its not the import tax in the UK, its the £8.50 flat rate charge the post office take for charging you the 20% vat.  So you get a £20 order come from abroad. they charge 20% of the value vat so £4 and then charge you £8.50 for taking the vat, so charges are well over half the order value

[Leon]

Its not the import tax in the UK, its the £8.50 flat rate charge the post office take for charging you the 20% vat.  So you get a £20 order come from abroad. they charge 20% of the value vat so £4 and then charge you £8.50 for taking the vat, so charges are well over half the order value

The handling fee is a pain in the backside, we get hit with that regularly on some of our imports. 

There might be some good news there though, the UK government are changing how they charge imports, so anything up to £135 in value should now have VAT applied at the point of sale and you won't have to pay any handling charges when it lands in the UK.  Of course the question there is how many foreign suppliers are going to go through the hassle of adding VAT functions to their websites and then paying it to HMRC...  I'd love to see the compliance estimates on that!

Under the new rules anything over the £135 would be dealt with as before (VAT + handling fee), and anything being sent to a VAT-registered business would come through without any charges at all, and those companies will record it as part of their VAT returns.

[Nirnman]

Many thanks for the update Leon however, this still leaves me here in Northern Ireland in the unique position of while still being part of the UK we are also still stuck with the EU rules and regulations. I can just see the PO here trying to charge UK VAT and make the charge on packages from the rest of the UK arriving here. it seems the Uk gov and the IDIOTS on the HILL(the NI Assembly for the rest of you  ) do not seem to have got their acts together and as from Jan 1 we will have an Irish Sea border between here and the rest of the Uk involving a lot of extra paperwork and governing what can and can't be sent from The Mainland to here. It will be interesting to see how this will affect orders from Mailnad manufacturers of "Shineys" arriving here. (Rant over )

[Genom]

With the Ireland Uk thing I noticed that in the last week or so, there was a bunch of firms closed down for a period that handled cross border postage. I can imagine that they'll start up again in the next month or two to handle a 3 stage thing to handle parcels from UK to Ireland, and Ireland to Europe to try and avoid a whole lot of issues (and causing a whole lot more)

[petercooman]

That's bad news, handling fees are 7.50 here i believe.

[Leon]

Many thanks for the update Leon however, this still leaves me here in Northern Ireland in the unique position of while still being part of the UK we are also still stuck with the EU rules and regulations. I can just see the PO here trying to charge UK VAT and make the charge on packages from the rest of the UK arriving here. it seems the Uk gov and the IDIOTS on the HILL(the NI Assembly for the rest of you  ) do not seem to have got their acts together and as from Jan 1 we will have an Irish Sea border between here and the rest of the Uk involving a lot of extra paperwork and governing what can and can't be sent from The Mainland to here. It will be interesting to see how this will affect orders from Mailnad manufacturers of "Shineys" arriving here. (Rant over )

I'm afraid we've not had any final guidance on NI as yet, they still seem to be figuring it out which is concerning given that this all comes into force in 3 days...  As far as I was aware NI remains part of the UK for VAT so there shouldn't be any additional VAT on entry.  I'll see what I can find out and let you know.

That's bad news, handling fees are 7.50 here i believe.

The fees are the nuisance in all of this, I'd hoped that something could be agreed as part of the deal but no luck unfortunately.  But if VAT OSS comes in as planned then it's only a short-term issue and the handling fees won't be needed after July 1st.

[petercooman]

I'm afraid we've not had any final guidance on NI as yet, they still seem to be figuring it out which is concerning given that this all comes into force in 3 days...  As far as I was aware NI remains part of the UK for VAT so there shouldn't be any additional VAT on entry.  I'll see what I can find out and let you know.

The fees are the nuisance in all of this, I'd hoped that something could be agreed as part of the deal but no luck unfortunately.  But if VAT OSS comes in as planned then it's only a short-term issue and the handling fees won't be needed after July 1st.

Leon, is there any knowledge what will happen to pick up orders? For example if i order a pickup at crisis (if it can take place) , would it also via the VAT OSS system? since it's after july?

[mmcv]

Many thanks for the update Leon however, this still leaves me here in Northern Ireland in the unique position of while still being part of the UK we are also still stuck with the EU rules and regulations. I can just see the PO here trying to charge UK VAT and make the charge on packages from the rest of the UK arriving here. it seems the Uk gov and the IDIOTS on the HILL(the NI Assembly for the rest of you  ) do not seem to have got their acts together and as from Jan 1 we will have an Irish Sea border between here and the rest of the Uk involving a lot of extra paperwork and governing what can and can't be sent from The Mainland to here. It will be interesting to see how this will affect orders from Mailnad manufacturers of "Shineys" arriving here. (Rant over )

As far as I'm aware the VAT is the same, the issue is more around goods that have tariff requirements. So our food will be more pricy (that which we can still get from the companies not pulling out due to additional admin) but at least our 'shineys' shouldn't be any more expensive. One to keep an eye on as the details get sorted out.

[Raider4]

Have you ensured that the Pendraken website conforms to modern standards though?

[Leon]

Leon, is there any knowledge what will happen to pick up orders? For example if i order a pickup at crisis (if it can take place) , would it also via the VAT OSS system? since it's after july?

Nothing confirmed yet, but I believe that we would charge you Belgian VAT on the purchase (as the sale happened in Belgium) and then we would have to complete a customs declaration at the EU/UK border to say how much product we sold.  We'd then have to pay the correct VAT, either on the spot or they would invoice us for later payment.  

I think the extra paperwork and charges will make Crisis very difficult for UK traders, as many of the smaller ones are not VAT-registered in the UK, so the Belgian VAT would be an additional expense that they do not usually have.  They would have to either sell at their usual prices and pay the VAT out of their profits.  Or add the VAT on top of their prices which could reduce the potential sales.  

That latter issue is a problem for a lot of smaller UK companies now, as their larger competitors can remove the VAT from EU orders to make the product appear cheaper.  And the smaller companies packages will still get caught by EU customs and get the additional charges added, making them a lot more expensive.

Have you ensured that the Pendraken website conforms to modern standards though?

Thankfully Netscape had disappeared before I started college...!