VAT when importing kit from EU….educate me

So my bargain Bell Super DH from Lord Gun (based in Italy) is not turning out to be such a bargain…

The helmet plus postage as £132, which I think you’ll agree is a bit of a bargain, in fact almost worthy of a PSA

Now I’m way too smart to get stung with a hefty VAT bill, so I checked the gov page here which says

Goods worth £135 or less in total
If you bought the goods yourself and they are not excise goods, the seller will have included VAT in the total you paid.

Fantastic says I and presses buy double quick (though I now have read the Lord Gun T&C which states they include VAT for EU)

And now I have an invoice for £51.56 consisting of

Customs Duty £3.53

Import VAT £36.03

Clearance Fee £12

The invoice refers to “Notice 143” which is difficult to find, but a guide I found on it states no import duty or VAT up to £135

What did I misunderstand in the govt guidance? Do I have grounds for contesting the invoice?

WWSTWD?

The helmet plus postage was £132

£132 plus post or inc post?

Including post

Customs Duties (Non EU)
Within the European Union (EU), there are no customs duties to be paid and goods are inclusive of VAT for the EU Members s(except in case of VAT-exempt invoices issued for VAT-registered businesses). For non-EU countries (and other places such as the Canary Islands) goods are exclusive of VAT and may be subject to Customs Duties or Import Taxes of the country of destination. It is not possible to provide a different quote for Custom Duties asked for, these must be entirely covered and paid for by the customer.

From here; https://www.lordgunbicycles.co.uk/help/delivery-infos

Have a look at your invoice email and see if you’ve paid local VAT.

No local VAT paid, the helmet cost is listed as ‘zero rated’

Everything in your OP sounds sensible except for the bit where they charged you import duty etc…

Bike helmets are zero VAT – simply Google to find the relevant HMRC pages – and go back to whoever sent the invoice to question the charges.

I’m thinking that customs has seen that the helmet is £126.76 + VAT…. Which I think you have said it is.

So they have added 20% UK VAT into the price, instead of 0% Italian VAT, and come to a total of ~£150 or something. Which is over the £135 limit.  So they’ve charged you.

Or to put it another way, for something to be <£135 inc VAT it would normally be <£112.50.  they’ve seen your helmet was £126.77 EX VAT and so decided it is above threshold, so charged you.

Bike helmets are zero VAT

This I like, https://www.gov.uk/guidance/protective-equipment-and-vat-notice-70123#pedal-cycle-helmets

Provided it confirms with standards and has a mark of conformity…i’ve no idea of this as I haven’t seen it yet, but I think I’ll try to query the charge

What goods value have they used for the calculation? The one in the declaration, or another one they’ve picked themselves inline with the normal price of the helmet?

If it’s anything like the other parts of HMRC, then they’ll have just used a random number generator to decide what is to be taxed.

That’s my experience with their total incompetence and my yearly tax statement (or 4 different tax statements in the space of 8 months, all of which are wrong and have a swing of about £5k between the🤬🤬🤬

What goods value have they used for the calculation?

Wouldnt it be lovely if they had told me that. and the commodity code and rate of import VAT they had used, instead of listing a random set of fees

I think I need to pay the fee, get the goods delivered and hopefully that type of information comes with the parcel then I have to contest the fee to try to get a refund

Unfortunately, you’ll have to either pay it or have it returned.  If you pay you can then dispute the charge BUT, you might not get the clearance fee back.  You should as it should never have been flagged in the first place, but as they have done that, you may not get that £12 back.

HMRC have been very receptive and quite quick for me in the past on these issues, but I’ve never had one where the resulting dispute takes it below the VAT threshold.

I ordered stuff from the DE sites over the years, almost always 24hr delivery. Was amazing

A Month ago I ordered some Ritchey Carbon Forks from DE, took 2 weeks to just get to the UK then a week in Customs hell, and then £97 import charge/fees on top.

We’ve really Brexitted ourselves good and proper!  (probably doesn’t add to this thread, just a mini rant!)

I got stung for £50 the other week on tyres from Germany. They seem to be very keen to charge these days, last year I bought various bike stuff from Germany and Holland with no charges. I now see Mantel are no longer delivering to the UK. So there must have been a recent change or tightening up of the rules. The grace period from leaving the EU seems to be over.

If you can talk to someone you may be able to get them to remove the VAT as it is obviously a non VAT item. The difficulty is getting the right person to talk to or email.

Personally I’m going to avoid purchasing from Europe from now on as once you’re stung with charges any perceived savings are wiped out or in my case it proved to be more expensive.