i noticed on the jenson website that stans Arch are only £47 when you buy stuff from the states do i have to pay any tax or any hidden costs?

Yes. But you might get away with it, or you might not.

Yes, Duty and VAT

so how much will it roughly equate too?

I'm looking into this at the moment (frame & forks) and it seems that you add the cost of the item to the postage, then times it by about 6% duty (14% for a complete bike) and then multiply that by 15% vat. And then pay the Parcelforce 'fee' on top.

OR….. if you are lucky they'll come through with no duty at all. I got stitched up on a fork whereas the chap who recommended them to me got his duty free. It's a bit of a lottery i'm afraid.

It all depends on the way the sender packages the parcel and what they declare on the parcel. If its sent to you as a personal gift or your own private belongongs then there should be not tax etc. Sent to you as a commercial sale with it's true value = £tax£. I'm pretty sure that's right.

(mr MC posting) from distant memory (lived in US 10 years ago and often shipped stuff home to my brother), you only pay the import duty if the cost/value is over a set limit, IIRC it was $200 then. So if I'd posted a £47 ($70ish?) part home, labelled to that value, it wouldnt incur any import tax.

It could still be liable for VAT, regardless of value. However….

Then you get into what bluepalomino said; many shippers mark something as "gift", or having a very low intrinsic value, or being a trade sample etc in order to avoid tax for the buyer. I recently bought a new shock from a trader in Taiwan off ebay and paid nothing tax-wise, and when I sent my brother some forks as a gift he paid no tax.

Might be worth emailing Supergo to find out what they do.

Jenson use fast carriage which is not cheap IIRC – VAT and duty goes on this too. And your warranty if tricky.

I wouldn't bother unless you are saving alot of money.