Shipping my bike back home - Import Tax?

peat

Morning,

I toured NZ earlier this year. I took my own bike with me and sent it home on it's own at the end of the trip.

I have just opened a letter from TNT (The courier) asking for £500+ of import tax. Before i get too wound up, my understanding is that as it was purchased in the UK, it is not an import, thus not liable for tax.

Have i got that right?

meanredspider

Yup - that's correct. You might need to demonstrate that it was purchased in the UK but otherwise you're fine.

redvee

£500 import tax :shock: How much value did you put on the customs declaration? Given import duty is based on a % of the value the value must be sky high.

briantrumpet

Just to note that the biggest element of 'import tax' is actually VAT. Depending on the category of item, there is then an import duty which is levied on the total of value of bike + VAT (yes, they put a tax on the duty!).

But as MRS says, if you demonstrate that it's yours and you paid VAT on it you should be OK, though I'm not sure if you can do that retrospectively - it might be that once they've paid it to HMRC they can't reclaim it. It's probably in their small print somewhere.

peat

Cheers chaps.

They've created the 'case file' for this and thus starts what i expect will be a long and drawn out process.

Value was £1500 (3000 NZD). So i'm confused how they even got to that number. We'll see, i guess.

bikergirl17

i had that too with FedEx on a birthday gift my mom shipped from the us on which she listed "bike parts - gift" -with a nominal value of US$20 - given a £50 tax bill. the reason they said was because it had been listed a commercial merchandise and my mother was a commercial exporter; they also couldn't explain where that amount came from ... good luck, as it took awhile to sort out.

kajjal

You should be fine once you prove it is yours with proof of purchase. They tend to enforce the rules on the safe side but larger courier companies will deal with this kind of issue quickly.