Shipping/international
have successfully shipped to a number of countries without any problems, but occasionally things do come up.
Customs Forms
I've never been sure how my shipments are supposed to be categorized -- are they "gifts" or "merchandise"? I gather that "gifts" are taxed at a lower rate, but since the shipment is commercial I originally thought I needed to put "merchandise". However, maybe that's intended to indicate merchandise for resale, which would not be the case here. Certainly if a customer ordered something to be sent as a gift to a relative or friend at another address, that would be a "gift", wouldn't it? Then what's the difference with ordering one for yourself? So I've come to the conclusion that "merchandise" is for resale only, and what I'm shipping are "gifts". (See also the Dutch Import Duties section below, where the postal worker marked the customs form as "merchandise".) If anybody knows the legalities on this, though, please feel free to post here (or on the discussion page) or contact me.
Dutch Import Duties
Recently (2005-04-15, ironically the day when personal income tax returns are due in the U.S.) a customer in Holland was charged "about $94" for an order of shirts totalling $178.00 (plus $23.60 in shipping = $201.60). She had to refuse the package as this raised the final total too far over her budget. She investigated the charges and was told that they were figured thusly:
$ 229,25 = € 176,00 + 12% = € 21,12 + 19% = € 37,45 (this is calculated over the total of 176 + 21,12 = 197,12) + fee = € 15 ----------------------- total = € 73,57 = about $94.00 US
I don't pretend to know the laws in this case, but this just seems wrong. First of all, they were charging 12% on $229.25, which is approximately the order total plus my shipping charge plus the actual cost of shipping including insurance (178 + 23.6 + 29.25 = 230.85). My understanding is that import duties are charged on the value of the merchandise, which should have been no more than $178.00.
It looks like they took the declared value of the merchandise -- which I put at $200, not knowing whether postage would be refunded or not in the event of a claim -- and added the postage to that, i.e. 200 + 29.25 = 229.25. So that was partly my fault... but why would the cost of postage be added in? And then on top of the 12% charge based on that, they also tacked another 19% (for what?) on the subtotal (i.e. effectively 21.28%, for a total percentage of 33.28%) and then of course the ever-popular unspecified "fee" of €15 which in this case is another 8.5% -- would be higher for a smaller order -- coming to over 40% of the total-with-shipping).
So my question at this point is: is this standard practice?? If anyone else has had experience with import duties to Holland, or any other European country, please feel free to add your own comments. If anyone knows what the official rules are, too. This strikes me as highway robbery.
I've sent many packages to Holland and never heard about such problems before.
