How much import tax will I have to pay?

[MitchT]

I quite fancy one of these.

US price is $625. US-based eBay seller is offering them for £374.54 (an exact conversion from USD to GBP) with free shipping to the UK.

I understand there'd be import duty, import VAT and a handling fee to pay, so the question is, how much is this going to cost me in taxes by the time I've actually got my hands on it? The HMRC website is, predictably, not proving remotely helpful.

[davepoth]

https://www.gov.uk/trade-tariff/commodities/420219...

Your import tariff code is 4202 1910 00 for Aluminium Briefcases. The duty on that is 5.7%. So £22.41 duty.

Then 20% on top of that for the VAT makes a total £476.33. There will be freight charges on top of that (unless free shipping really does mean free shipping) plus whatever clearance charges you get stung for, so I'd suggest you will be lucky to get change from £550. That's assuming the exchange rate doesn't move.

[ukshooter]

There are a number of similar cases available here in the UK (or Europe without the duty issues) at decent prices.

[Patch1875]

I got some bike parts delivered recently the clearance charge was £8.

[Esseesse]

Ask seller to mark item as a gift.

[Ean218]

Esseesse said:

Ask seller to mark item as a gift.

Yes, fraud is always the best option.

[Patch1875]

I bought around $650 of bike parts the company marked it as $99 so my total bill vat and clearance was £28 I never even asked them to do it!