I notice that ebay are now charging VAT on all UK purchases from the EU. Strange as I understood that the application of VAT on platforms such as ebay and other online buying was still to be clarified.

I noticed that today on an auction in Holland. Who pays this extra 20%, is it on top of your bid?

Just seen that, looks like we pay if importing from EU as it has the price + vat ?

buyer pays the VAT
Here in NZ we have had to pay GST since xmax 2019
It is easy as it is just added to the invoice but if you have a forwarding address it gets more complicated we have to save all our E Bay receipts and enter them ourselves
And if the seller uses a different format it becomes a pain in the A
This is possibly brought on in the UK by Brexit

Odd. I thought the new trade deal meant we didn't have to pay extra when buying from the EU.
Maybe ebay had set up for applying VAT in case of no deal and haven't taken it off again.

Not ebay looking at ways of cashing in some how

It's showing on usa auctions now.

quote:

Originally posted by Raj:
Odd. I thought the new trade deal meant we didn't have to pay extra when buying from the EU.
Maybe ebay had set up for applying VAT in case of no deal and haven't taken it off again.

I guess the problem is a deal which was struck at the last minute, 1246 pages long and which has to be read by legal experts (who are probably off on their holidays anyway).

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:
It's showing on usa auctions now.

The USA thing was going to happen anyway, also items below £15 were exempt pre-2021 but it seems that is no longer the case for commercial products.

So if VAT is being applied automatically by USA ebay, does that mean there will no longer be custom charges and hold ups when they get to the UK. If so, it will actually be cheaper as one won't be paying Royal Mail £8 a shot to collect the VAT.

Have to say no chance of me buying anything off ebay from outside UK in the future . I had already stopped buying from the USA but still got cards from Canada and Australia that never had customs charges .

This may help, and from what I see here, I think eBay may be wrong...

https://www.royalmail.com/brexit

quote:

Originally posted by Triple-Frog:
Have to say no chance of me buying anything off ebay from outside UK in the future . I had already stopped buying from the USA but still got cards from Canada and Australia that never had customs charges .

I've had customs charges from both Canada and Australia. If you haven't, you were lucky.

Imagine the Joy for royal mail collecting more £8 "handling fees"

Looking at the Royal Mail link and then onto the government link from there, it might work out a bit better. It looks like goods under £135 won't, or shouldn't, be charged VAT. That's better than the current £15 value.

I'm not sure ebay ever get anything right. I will never understand how they can get away with charging 10% final value fee on the postage you charge even when you don't use ebay postal services. Hence I always sell on £1 offer weekends.
Anyway back to the VAT customs...it could work out OK. But it might take a while for every department to catch up. I've never known Royal Mail, HMRC or any of that lot to be in a hurry to do anything. Probably worth watching what happens from the first proper week into 2021 coming up.

In regards to Royal Mail it's more of a headache selling overseas, because last Sept they added yet another 'zone'. The USA is in a zone all by itself now and costs more than sending to Canada. How or why that happened I don't know.
Other than buying from people in the USA whom I know will be kind on the customs form I won't be dabbling overseas much. And I limit the sales I open to overseas too; even with tracking it's just a headache.

Okay so I decided to TOFTT and purchased a card from the USA. It was listed as $74 on the US website with shipping and $88 looking at it on the UK site. Purchase cost with VAT was £68. Even if I am stung by Royal Mail, the card doesn't sell for less than £100 here so I don't feel I will lose out due to the experiment. I will keep you posted on what happens.

If this story on the BBC News website is anything to go by, a lot of places may soon stop selling to the UK so the subject could become mute anyway

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55530721

Looks like this is becoming a bigger story generally well beyond trading cards . Will be interesting to see if anything changes over the next six months as more people complain to their MP's , both in the UK and the EU .

I just got a package from America today. The customs form says value $30. There was no customs charge attached.

Just purchased a sketch card from France i was charged €7 vat by ebay let's see what happens when it arrives ?