International Merch Postage From the UK Taxes?

[GazzaWxZ-080320]

Hi everybody, I was wondering is there is anybody on this forum from any country other than the UK that can tell me anything about import tax when you get music merch from the UK?

I am in a band and we have had some merch returned from Greece, France, Lithuania and Brazil with the reason for the return given as “unclaimed”. It turned out that these countries and maybe all countries have a tax on post that the receiver has to pay to get the parcel. We didn’t know anything about this!

Could anybody from anywhere outside the UK post on this thread to let us know if you have to pay import taxes to receive merch from the UK. I will add some more details later.

Massive thanks for your help,
Gazza
https://maximumrobot.bandcamp.com/

[AlSymerz]

Sounds to me like you need to hit up Google and look for sometime like "shipping taxes between UK and Europe"

In Australia we don't usually pay to receive the package from the UK, the price includes all taxes. Some places might separate the tax so it can be seen as a secondary cost, some just include it it the total cost. Usually I see things like 'price includes VAT' or 'some taxes apply' etc, but it's not often something like band merch, t-shirts etc, would be stopped at customs for the receiver to pay.

There are some packages that incur a tax here (based on the value of the package) and they require the receiver to pay a fee but in most cases the receiver will know that and be ready to accept it.

[GazzaWxZ-080320]

Yeah, it’s annoying! We have only sent one parcel (containing two cassettes) to Australia and it was not returned to us so either they paid the tax or, like you said, there is no tax in Australia. I might find the answer with Google but first I thought I’d try to find out what people know on here. I assumed other bands would have this issue. I’ll post/attach the French paperwork first when I’ve scanned it or photographed it and see if anyone knows what that’s all about!

[GazzaWxZ-080320]

Here we go! “taxe de douane à percevoir” What is this? It looks like €9.00 but the writing is a bit illegible! I Googled that tax but all the pages and results were in French! I’ll post the Greek and Brazilian ones later. Any French people on this forum?

[AlSymerz]

In Australia we pay all taxes applicable to the country of origin as a part of the original transaction. It's expected that the international seller pays whatever taxes are required to get the package out of their country and to ours. Our government puts an extra import tax on items over $1000 (I think it is) and that tax must be paid by the receiver in order to get the package. But any other taxes from any other country are assumed to be paid by the sender.

I've had auto parts from the US held up in customs due to the seller putting the AU value of the product and not the US value. The package should never have attracted import tax but it was held up because of the value. I've never had anything from anywhere else held up. I do seem to remember some kind of tax declaration attached to some packages but I don't remember what they said because they were for the seller to declare not me.