Well honestly, if I would be a parent and would like to teach my kid from a young age entrepreneurship, and we would live in Kreuzlingen (for ex.) … after school, this would be a great opportunity to get pocket money + make new friends (and to avoid the “pedo” jokes … with his/hers school mates :))
You mean you’d proudly raise a sausage and shampoo smuggler?!
Yes, marton, what are you saying? Or asking?
You said it was too much work for customs to do all the calculation for Fr. 300.00 and you clearly verified it with numbers.
But now it’s the same yet for even less amounts! So it’s even worse.
this last bit I don’t understand. Care to elaborate?
I suspect a native slavic language speaker in which “pedo” is a derogatory term for homosexual. Intentionally ignored it, but you had to ask…
I understood the word but not the context in his/her post.
“Don’t be gay, be brave! Be a smuggler.” Shall I get more explicit or you catch the drift?
LOL can’t say I catch the drift but leave it at that. Seems I just replied to a silly post. My bad.
Actually, they wouldn’t be smugglers - as long as the person they drag along to cover the people/goods ratio demand of customs is not an illegal immigrant. Getting caught as a “Schlepper” … never mind the goods in your trunk.
Gotta love narrow minded people … or maybe some can not take a joke … or maybe they do not understand what I wrote …
Where you see smuggling / others will see opportunity … and my post was meant as a joke … but, hey … I know some do not know how to get a joke …
Clarifications : pedo - short for pedephile / sorry to disappoint … not slavic … and good night
Yes, they’ll be smugglers. Its the literal definition of the word: transporting goods that will be consumed by someone else against a fee and avoiding paying import duty.
1 Like
Here is the press release, not available in English and already posted by Roxi.
I do not see any mention that the limit only applies to goods in the 8.1% class.
Also, there is no mention of any change to the rule that import charges of CHF 5 or less are waived so presumably we can bring in just under CHF 200 of groceries (2.6% rated) without payment.
The press release also says
“.A lower value-free limit would disproportionately increase the customs clearance and inspection costs for both the Federal Office of Customs and Border Security and travelers.
The lower the value-free limit is set, the greater the number of customs clearances will be.”
The whole scheme looks like a cock-up to me and I would be surprised if it reduces purchases abroad.
In my case, the nearest Aldi to my home is in Germany so even if the duty-free allowance were reduced to nil I would still shop there.
I won’t go to Germany to buy shampoos or even meat, frankly. But the diversity of products you get there is much better than in Switzerland if you ask me.
Recently I had to buy some clothes for my kids and they wanted to try them on first as they’re not very happy with Zalando (especially the older one). So we went to one of the famous malls around ZH and you only had two extremes - either the poor quality in C&A, H&M* etc or very expensive stuff. There were no mid range products, I mean we would be willing to pay a bit more than H&M but not say Globus prices. There are many companies that never even opened shops here. When we go to our home countries we buy a lot of clothes, funny that.
*I do the laundry, they’re poor quality, I know that. (and not even that cheap…)
Well no, simply accompanying someone across the border to allow them to legally import goods is not smuggling per se. Not saying it’s right, but I don’t think any offence is being committed.
Just thinking about the possibilities as mental exercise.
The process I know is that you get a ticket with a pixel code from the shop, bring this ticket along the goods to the border, the border police scan it, the goods allegedly are brought into Switzerland, you get you money back to the card.
The interesting part here is the allegedly part. What if someone gets the tax refund, gets the ticket scanned and money back, but goods never leave the EU? That would be tax free shopping in the EU.
1 Like
Entirely doable, provided that the German OR Swiss Grenzwache dont stop the car with the stamped tax refund for a random check. Admittedly, I’ve never been stopped for a “random” check neither of my receipt, nor of the trunk, but I’ve seen cars being checked.
The person transferring the goods across the border has neither paid for them and will neither use them. However, he will get a fee for the transport service. I believe this is called a Mule
2 Likes
No, I think the idea is that the person accompanies the shopper, all perfectly legal as far as I can tell. No different from taking your kids or houseguests over with you. The question of a fee is irrelevant.
1 Like
Also completely illegal. Most customs posts where they will do this are placed where you cannot turn around and go back into the country where you bought it to get the refund anyway. There used to be a border post at Lörrach/Riehen which was a couple of hundred metres from the actual Swiss border and allowed you to physically do this - I used it once many years ago when I bought a set of motorbike leathers in Lörrach, got the stamp, turned round, got the refund at the shop, then came back over - but the last time I checked it was no longer possible to get the stamp at that post, so you need to use the motorway crossing where you cannot turn around.
I guess there may be some places where it’s still possible, but I’m not aware of any. And as I said it’s definitely not legal to do so.
For sure.
Just wondering about the incentives for residents in Germany with friends or family in Switzerland.
The import allowance is for goods for the personal use of the shopper, or as a gift.
That is not the case here.
The fee is entirely relevant - especially if used as proof in a court case that the person with the shopper was acting solely as a paid mule.
1 Like
Yep, I agree. The in your and Roxis link mentioned Steuergerechtigkeit - fairness of taxation - claiming border cantons have an advantage (interesting: only St. Gallen and Thurgau are mentioned there, rofl. I suspect in Basel and Ticino there are much more people shopping abroad) is nonsense. When I lived in canton Thurgau for a while, taxes were higher there than in canton Zurich! So it would be only fair they get a chance to eat cheaper.
The other thing is that if one uses the app, everything is taxes with 8.1% VAT. So everybody will stop at the border to make sure they are charged correctly. In person by a customs-employee. We will soon need more of those, paid by the taxpayer, because we have to count chicken-legs and Knoppers-cookies. Very reasonable indeed.
Lately Switzerland seems to be mainly governed by the people as the activity of the government causes endless initiatives and rightly so as they usually come through and the government loses. Obviously we did something wrong at the last elections.
However, this tax-free thing does not call for an initiative, imo.
1 Like
This is slightly amusing - on the Swissinfo page regarding the new threshold, they aren’t sure whether to use less or fewer in a sentence so they’ve hedged their bets and used both together:
According to the Federal Council, it is conceivable that purchasing behaviour will change with a lower tax-free limit. However, it is not possible to say whether people will buy less or fewer goods at a time and more often.
3 Likes