Customs Duties on mail order items

Complaints Corner
1
Just a grumble but not enough for complaints corner!

Bought a sky plus box and had it sent over here.

Box cost about 149 gbp less VAT but plus shipping charge.

No problem.

Zoll bill for 83.65 CHF just arrived.

29.90 MWSt and then the rest was admin etc!!!

Still cheap at half the price as I can now record one channel and watch another!!

But really!

Enjoy the sun today!

2
Yes, they do charge you to open it and then the taxes on top.

That'll be Fedex + SwissPost then; UPS just send you a bill on the declared value....go figure

I assume you used Simply Digital for the box order?

And yes Sky+ is excellent; try a Dreambox too - single tuner and no series links but MY GOD WHAT A MACHINE!!!

3
My father once sent me a DVD for Christmas. They gave me 2 francs of mwst, then another 10 on top for the admin fee of taxing it.

I thought it was a bit harsh for nothing except a simple DVD worth 30 francs. But that's what they are like at the Zollamt - absolutely bastards.

Bring on the EU I say!

4
Doesn't writing 'present' or 'gift' on the envelope negate the need to pay import tax in Switzerland? It seems to work for me. Though Gift in German means 'poison', so probably best to stick with present, unless, of course, the package contains arsenic.

I'm waiting for some software to arrive from Amazon.co.uk, so now doubt there will be a hefty import tax. Still much cheaper than buying it locally, though.

5
You will find that writing gift exempts the tax as long as the value is under CHF 100. Note here that value means value stated on the sticker plus the postage costs! If the value is less than CHF 5 then it is anyway exempt but why the hell should you send it! And as far as I am aware if the packet is marked as trade samples then it is free of charge irrespective of value.

For books the VAT is only 2.4% so it is not worth worrying about but heavy books attract most duty so beware...

If the item does not have a sticker expect a CHF 10 inspection charge plus the CHF 10 handling charge which you will get anyway. Cleverly you might also see an additional CHF 8 storage charge if there is no sticker on. I have questioned this and been told that it was because the parcel had to be stored until there was enough time to inspect it. What bollocks.

Swiss Parcel as far as I am aware has a fixed fee of CHF 43 plus the duty and VAT amount so when using fedex, USPS, etc check to see what alternatives are available.

6
I've had some things come through without inspection (books from Amazon) but somethings that have arrived have been inspected.

I didn't know what the norm was. (still don't really).

Have asked around at school and other people have had similar experiences. Some packages get through untouched and some don't.

All very odd.

I have just put it down to the idiosyncrasies of life here. (another one.....).

I would ask what's a dreambox Lob, but I guess I can google.

Great day today isn't it?

7
Ok - I went to the website - I know what a dreambox looks like.

What on earth is it?

Ok, I'm female and have kids but I am still sub 40 and didn't understand half of it!!! Oh boy.

I can manage a sky+ box now - but half those abbrev. I hadn't got a clue.

I'm feeling very thick now!

8
As far as Amazon is concerned, I have found books get through the net easy but CDs and Software get hammered. It may also be worth comparing Amazon.co.uk with Amazon.de. The german site also has english books and usually ships to CH quickly and with minimal or no postage charge. But you still get whacked with customs either way.

9
a dreambox is a linux-based satellite receiver that does alot of what both a PC and a receiver can do

10
If you bring it in, in person, and pay at the airport you don't need to pay the admin stuff so it works out at only MWSt. Did you make sure that you didn't pay UK VAT when you ordered it?

Yep - the dual tuner functionality is great. I'm sorry I waited so long before getting one. With most of the boxes you can whack a standard PC IDE drive in and take the capacity up to 250gigs. That's 125 hours of programming! The only problem is clearing all your recordings, I've got a 160gig drive waiting to go in mine that I've had for a year now.......

Gav

11
Well here`s a funny thing ..... Amazon messed up on a order I placed a few months ago and sent it to me twice. They realised their mistake before the parcels arrived so I knew to expect two packages and to send one back at their cost. Unbelievably the two parcels arrived on the same day, one with duty of around Sfr7 and the other with duty of Sfr 19! So it`s official, customs just make up what they charge.

12
a tip for Amazon.com shopping - certainly for books, see if Amazon.de has the book - €25 or more and postage is free to Swissieland too.

This encourages you to order single books and avoid duty. I did this with DVDs for a long time from play.com who will send them "free" as single items too

13
I’ve just had to pay CHF15.15 to have a PS2 game sent from play.com released from the poste

5.15 was the TVA, and get this.. CHF10 was the post office charge for collecting and forwarding the money to customs!

I phoned customs and they explained that any goods sent from an internet company with a value of more than CHF60 are liable to 7.60% VAT and then a CHF10 charge from the post office for collecting it. However presents sent from private household to private household are exempt from VAT.

I pointed out that this was a present ordered by my mother on the internet, they pointed out that as it came from a company it is liable to the TVA. They also pointed out that when crossing the border by car you are allowed CHF300 of goods exempt from VAT after that they charge, so those of you loading up your cars from UK beware.

However customs did point out that with more than 10,000 parcels coming in everyday you have to be quite unlucky to have your one stopped.

14
Nick, you're not the only one. There's also some coverage of crossing with a car done recently - here

15
Well I must be REALLY unlucky because I've never had any package get through without tax. The few francs of tax and the 10 franc charge for collecting it is standard I'm afraid. Funny thing is that they'd probably SAVE money if they raised the tax free limit on parcels.

Not much we can do about these sort of charges, it's just the price we pay for not being in the EU. If it makes you feel better I just had a whole lot of stuff (around 2000 euro) shipped from Germany. I had to pay CHF300 in taxes, and an additional 200 in various customs clearing charges from the forwarding company.

16
I still find you can save heavily vs Swiss prices.

After extensive research on CH prices we have purchased all sorts overseas by internet and package post or delivery; italy: bed; germany: sauna; skis; sky+ box and lnb, usa: laser range finder and still been better off than sourcing it locally even after vat and shipping and handling, as long as the vendor will export ex local VAT.

As mark says you've got to look at the opportunity gain and ignore the opportunity cost. Hey in Germany, Italy they are paying 40%+ tax and 20% odd VAT.

Daniel

17
Concerning amazon.de there used to be a help page on working out how much you could order in books and CDs to keep the VAT below 5chf, the deminimis level to trigger duty. If you searched "schweiz" und the help pages it was there, but last time I looked for it, it was gone. Either the CH complained or the amazonians realized it was costing them buckets of postage for small orders.

Anyway I think it was:

- for books 5chf/2.4%=208chf=c135eur

- for cds etc 5chf/7.6%=c66chf=c40eur

Daniel

18
Very interesting topic...

It seems that nobody really knows, but maybe we could setup a chart so that we can at least estimate how much we'll be paying, and therefore if it's worth buying from here or abroad...

19
Well it's not that hard really. Usually the answer is 7.6% + something - where something is the admin charges. If using the standard post the charge is 10 francs, so it's quite simple to estimate it.

20

There's a post with an excerpt from post.ch in this post:

http://www.englishforum.ch/help-tips...itzerland.html

I find that if I keep the value of packages to be less than Sfr60, it usually comes tax-free. I haven't had to pay tax in years.

~ Nanda