Import Duty Advice

Finance, Taxes, Banking, Insurance and Retirement
1
I would be very grateful if someone could give me some advice regarding import tax. I wish to take advantage of the current UK sales, buy a sofa, and have it delivered to Lugano.

I have had a look through the various threads posted on this site but have yet to find the exact information i require. Can anyone point me in the direction of an English language website / authority that i can consult on this matter?

We have been here for less than six months and i am told as such i can import the furniture as part of my original delivery of my belongings......not sure about this though.

Thanks very much in advance

2
You can import furniture and personal items that already belong to you duty free, not new purchases.

If you are importing new items you will pay the VAT on it. Other fees? Probably a broker fee and/or admin fee at customs, but I don't know how much those are.

3
Thanks for taking the time to reply - i am very grateful.

4
There are two separate questions here:

1) You buy the sofa as normal in the UK, and then ship it with your other personal belongings to Switzerland. Theoretically, if it is less than 6 months old (could be 1 year, but I think it was 6 months) then you should declare it when importing, and you will be charged the VAT. However, as long as it is unpacked from the original manufacturer's packaging, and included in your shipment of other personal items, I think it is very unlikely that they will ever check or be able to tell that it is new, so you should get away without paying the Swiss VAT without too many problems.

2) You want to get the sofas delivered by the shop to Switzerland. In this case, you can't take advantage of the waiver of import duties for personal items when relocating. Instead, you will have to pay Swiss VAT (7.6%) plus a handling charge. I am not sure how much the charge would be for something large like a sofa, but the delivery company should be able to give you an idea. However, bear in mind that the shop should NOT charge you UK VAT, so whatever the shop price is, you can knock off the UK VAT at 15%. This should cover the Swiss VAT, handling charge, and probably a lot of the shipping costs too!

5
Spot on advice there .... Shipping from the UK for 100KG should cost no more than 400.- , the 1000kg loads I ship cost 1660.- one way , the shipping agent fees will vary from town to town , but actualy it's not hard to do this your self.

We do this kinda thing a lot with musical equipment for studios and musicians & it's nothing more than getting an exit stamp with zero duty & an import stamp for switzerland , hand over the swiss VAT and thats it..

6
A friend sent me a painting she did by FedEx from Canada. It was held by customs and I had to fill out some forms declaring that it was not a piece of heritage art and I had to pay the VAT on the amount she declared it was worth (what I paid).

7
There's a poster on here, Grumpy Grapefruit, who does regular runs to the UK to buy cheese for the Cheese Club.

He regularly picks up other stuff and vans it back over, so it may be worth asking for a price depending on where the painting is in the UK and if it's near any good cheese producers .

kodokan

8
Hey ho .. talk to me.. I have to make runs with a transit van in the next months...