Jump to content

Has anyone sussed out how buying from the EU will work?


Simon Lewis

Recommended Posts

Like many here, I make personal and business related purchases from the likes of Thomann (obviously EU) and DV247 (not always quite so obviously EU).

 

Trying to navigate government and consumer websites for information and guidance for post Jan1st purchases isn't easy or simple...

 

Some sites suggest consumer purchases over £390 will incur customs duties. Government sites suggest various things to register for, employing agents and listing commodity codes for every item (which comically don't fit the items we buy)

 

Has anyone sussed this out yet or is everyone as confused as me?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 88
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

DV247 (not always quite so obviously EU).

 

DV247 are EU now?! That's news to me, I remember when they were on Acton High Street as Digital Village.

 

Has anyone sussed this out yet or is everyone as confused as me?

 

Like somebody else said, Boris has no idea what he's agreed to so there's not much chance of anyone else getting it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm working on the basis that it will be very similar to buying stuff from China but with the £390 limit before taxes and fees. I would expect the vendor to remove local VAT for an export to a third country. Edited by GR1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As the purchaser you don't need to do anything. You certainly don't need to register anywhere.

 

I suspect that many of the larger EU based suppliers will do what a lot of the US suppliers have done and register with HMRC to collect the VAT and duty, if applicable, on their behalf. For example...I buy quite a lot of components from Mouser in the US. They deal with all the VAT and Duties and I simply pay them in GBP. They deal with all the other stuff. (As I'm VAT registered they deduct the VAT from the invoice).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

DV247 are EU now? ! That's news to me, I remember when they were on Acton High Street as Digital Village.

 

AFAIK they are a UK-based, but German-owned company, so who knows? As for DV in Acton; my recollection is very young, very willing, but very slow (I haven't used them since they closed the branches).

Edited by sandall
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The experience will be essentially the same experience as buying/selling has been from china; by the looks of it most of the levels and paperwork will be the same (slight advantage of no actual tariffs applied but still VAT to be paid to the delivery company) - we expect the biggest problems to actually be related to insurance. There is no consensus or definitive answer yet as to whether the CE & other EU safety criteria / standards / legislation will be respected in the UK or if the new UK equivalent legislation with differ significantly - ie if you import a piece of equipment after 1st Jan will it actually comply with safety regulations and will your insurance company cover it if it blows up and burns a building down because it /doesn't/ have the correct UK regulations compliance certificates & markings. Obviously there's going to be a certain amount of grace but I'll bet you if someone buys a load of kit from an EU supplier on 2nd January, installs it in the Royal Albert Hall and it burns down the insurance companies will be leaning more on the side of "your kit doesn't comply with UK regulations and markings so we won't pay" than taking a generous view that you did your best to understand the conflicting government statements.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

...Thomann (obviously EU)...

 

Not so obvious in my experience - at least when was buying stuff on account with Thomann some years ago, we paid in GBP to a UK account, even though the invoice one receives is in EUR. Our accounts team got it wrong a couple of times and had to talk to Thomann to get it sorted out; I know that it was one of the suppliers they had do a special case to make things line up on our system. My somewhat hazy understanding was that they did enough sales in the UK that it was worth them registering a subsiduary in the UK and handling transactions through it, eating the currency exchange fees etc themselves. Or something along those lines, I wasn't very clear!

 

There is some information on the validity of CE marking on the gov.uk website; it'll still be valid for some time depending on category, but it'll gradually be replaced with the 'UKCA' mark. Needless to say there's still some details to be worked out...!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Obviously there's going to be a certain amount of grace but I'll bet you if someone buys a load of kit from an EU supplier on 2nd January, installs it in the Royal Albert Hall and it burns down the insurance companies will be leaning more on the side of "your kit doesn't comply with UK regulations and markings so we won't pay" than taking a generous view that you did your best to understand the conflicting government statements.

 

Good job our legal system, which incidentally is the envy of the world, doesn't work like that then.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good job our legal system, which incidentally is the envy of the world, doesn't work like that then.

 

I would refer you to the current lengthy, costly and incredibly frustrating court case currently in progress where the insurance industry are trying to claim that a global pandemic and being forced to shut down by the government isn’t the sort of thing businesss interruption insurance has to cover because of some highly specific by-the-letter readings of regulations and documents as opposed to the common sense reading of the same texts....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My somewhat hazy understanding was that they did enough sales in the UK that it was worth them registering a subsiduary in the UK and handling transactions through it, eating the currency exchange fees etc themselves. Or something along those lines, I wasn't very clear!

 

That's certainly what a relation's company did in overseas territories where they did enough t/o.

 

Unfortunately the Leader of the Conservative Party is probably too uninterested in anything to do with business to even begin to try to understand any of this.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One outcome of all this may be that some pro audio brands set up UK distribution again. I can think of several big names who within the last decade or so have centralised their operations on the continent. The lead time (even before anything Brexit-related) was a serious pest and led us to change some of the brands we specified.

 

Similarly, warranty/service has been centralised - we've had a frustrating time recently with a faulty powered speaker which has been to Belgium and back three times without resolution. Not to say that a UK-based operation wouldn't have similar problems, but at least the journey wouldn't be taking 3-4 days each way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The biggest winners should be the VAT accountants sorting out the myriad individual member state VAT rates together with the temporary Covid 19 VAT rates most member states are charging. No more "triangulation" and no more simplified VAT system means that every time an item crosses an internal EU border it may just have to pay and claim back VAT. Today if I order a lantern from a German supplier which he gets made in Italy and transported through France to the UK I pay once to the German company. Day after tomorrow? Who knows?

 

Insurance and CE marks are covered until January 2022 unless the Chinese say; "We use a globally accepted CE mark. You want different, you pay." The real insurance headache comes if they fail to sort qualifications equivalence. Will a UK qualified electrician be covered by insurance to tour Germany? "Conformity" and "equivalence" is one of the areas completely blanked in this deal. The EU can set any terms it likes on those.

 

Next after that is "selling to the public" which can only be done under stringent work visa rules and not the general 90 day visas. Does that include ticket sales and merch or will we need to use EU based subsidiaries meaning the local taxes need paying? How does it all affect hiring kit to tour across internal and external EU borders?

 

This will take a while to sort out if it ever does get sorted. I suspect that lots of technically "illegal" stuff will go on and a blind eye will be turned. A few people will try to fiddle things and a few, not necessarily the same few, will get hammered. I am waiting for Prof Chris Grey to get back from his holiday to interpret it all as his blog has been one of the few honest and accurate accounts of the whole debacle.

 

MeanwhileTry This.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.