Post-Brexit delivery charges

[Dave2002]

Floods can be really difficult. We never (so far) had a flood whch got into a house, but we have had floods in the road due to blocked drains - with the threat that the water would rise up a bit further and get in. One house a bit further down had floorboards, and the owner said he could see the water about a foot under his rooms.

Another problem can be if there are fields behind which are on a slope - and indeed we have that scenario in our latest house. In the previous one the water ran down in to the back garden, and then filled the path just outside the conservatory we'd put in. The water came within an inch or so of the door - but fotunately never got in. A concrete barrier can hold water back - but only as long as it doesn't get breached. Perhaps a short term measure would be sand bags, but they're not going to hold back a deluge. Perhaps they can be used to persuade the water down towards a drain - but the drain does have to be clear.

[Pulcinella]

Move to EU to avoid Brexit costs, firms told
Exporters advised by Department for International Trade officials to form EU-based companies to circumvent border issues

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/23/brexit-hit-firms-advised-government-officials-set-up-shop-in-eu

[Leinster Lass]

Move to EU to avoid Brexit costs, firms told
Exporters advised by Department for International Trade officials to form EU-based companies to circumvent border issues

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-up-shop-in-eu

Quelle surprise! Of course, they could always relocate to The Emerald Isle, or at least register their new company here - we're not as inhospitable as certain mainland European countries seem to be at present.

[teamsaint]

Quelle surprise! Of course, they could always relocate to The Emerald Isle, or at least register their new company here - we're not as inhospitable as certain mainland European countries seem to be at present.

Certainly more tax friendly if you happen to be a tech giant.....

[cloughie]

Move to EU to avoid Brexit costs, firms told
Exporters advised by Department for International Trade officials to form EU-based companies to circumvent border issues

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-up-shop-in-eu

You couldn’t make it up!

[oddoneout]

Quelle surprise! Of course, they could always relocate to The Emerald Isle, or at least register their new company here - we're not as inhospitable as certain mainland European countries seem to be at present.

Only solves part of the problem. For distribution through mainland Europe makes more sense to start from there.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?22547-Trade-Deal-or-No-Deal/page17

see #162

[Dave2002]

You couldn’t make it up!

Are all the changes perhaps really just work/job creation schemes? Unfortunate that they happen to coincide with a time when many people can't work in quite the ways that they were able to before, even though many are discovering that flexible working and working from home are feasible, and at least sometimes preferable to having to commute or travel to work.

[oddoneout]

Are all the changes perhaps really just work/job creation schemes? Unfortunate that they happen to coincide with a time when many people can't work in quite the ways that they were able to before, even though many are discovering that flexible working and working from home are feasible, and at least sometimes preferable to having to commute or travel to work.

For all these people? https://www.bifa.org/media/4316303/1..._agent_web.pdf

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/appoint-someone-to-deal-with-customs-on-your-behalf

So far so good*, except that there aren't enough https://www.theguardian.com/politics...rexit-red-tape
*If you disregard the 'reducing red tape' mantra
This appears at the end of that article

A Conservative party source said: “Rachel Reeves is being misleading, because as she knows the government made no such promise. Labour under Sir Keir Starmer spent the last four years seeking to overturn the 2016 referendum result, and trying to block Brexit, opposing our plans to take back control of our borders and arguing we were spending too much money on preparations.”

I don't know about Rachel Reeves being misleading, but I don't think Sir Keir has been the Labour leader for that long...
On past performance by the time a government 'commitment' to provide the necessary personnel delivers there won't be enough businesses to employ them any more.

[Dave2002]

Not sure if this is Brexit related, but I had a delivery today - ostensibly from Switzerland with a CN 22 Customs Declaration form stuck on. Value - 96p.

Last year I ordered a camera card from MyMemory, but it failed, so I returned it. They offered me a voucher code for replacement items.

I eventually got round to ordering a few items to the value (plus a bit) of the original item, and the package containing these was put on my doorstep this morning.
I'd no idea that MyMemory had an office in Switzerland. I do wonder if the CN 22 form is a new invention, or if it's been put on packages before.

What is also interesting is the last column - tariff no - which in my case was 8523 5100 - whatever that is! Someone has been doing (creating) a lot of work.

[Bryn]

Not sure if this is Brexit related, but I had a delivery today - ostensibly from Switzerland with a CN 22 Customs Declaration form stuck on. Value - 96p.

Last year I ordered a camera card from MyMemory, but it failed, so I returned it. They offered me a voucher code for replacement items.

I eventually got round to ordering a few items to the value (plus a bit) of the original item, and the package containing these was put on my doorstep this morning.
I'd no idea that MyMemory had an office in Switzerland. I do wonder if the CN 22 form is a new invention, or if it's been put on packages before.

What is also interesting is the last column - tariff no - which in my case was 8523 5100 - whatever that is! Someone has been doing (creating) a lot of work.

https://www.edgectp.com/documents/what-is-a-customs-declaration-cn22/

[Dave2002]

https://www.edgectp.com/documents/wh...laration-cn22/

This page from the IOM gives more info still - https://www.iompost.com/for-you/send...-january-2021/

plus following a link we get to a list of tariff codes - http://www.wcoomd.org/en/topics/nome...7-edition.aspx

and a page about Harmonized trade arrangements - http://www.wcoomd.org/en/topics/nome...onvention.aspx - which seems to date back to 1988.

[oddoneout]

This gives some insight into the process. From here https://www.theguardian.com/money/20...ment-147015978

Fwoggie
4 hours ago
Guardian Pick

Supply chain person here.

I can give an example (I wrote about it on twitter, no prizes for guessing what my twitter account might be):

Let's say if you want to buy the latest and greatest Adidas Predator 20+FG football boot from a German website they want €195.97 (the price on Adidas Germany's site). That is over the VAT threshold of £135 (search for "notice 143" if interested to find out more) so VAT needs to be paid. Lets say shipping was an extra €10 and then there was €5 for insurance. Total cost is €210.97. The courier will pick it up and bring it to the UK but as pointed out above you won't get it until you pay fees.

To figure out how much fees are likely to be:

1) Figure out the HS (Harmonized Schedule) code at http://www.trade-tarriff.service.gov.uk/sections. HS codes are a system run by the world customs organization (WCO, yes that's a thing) to provide a global standard classification for all types of goods. The Trade Tarriff website will tell you whether import tax is due. For football boots, it's 8% according to that site.

2) Next up, how much is €210.97 in GBP? The UK government defines them on a monthly basis and you can find them at https://www.gov.uk/government/public...r-2021-monthly. To save you reaching for a calculator, it's £190.49.

3) First you add the 8% import tariff. That's £15.24.

4) Next you add the VAT which is calculated against the cost of the shoes + shipping + insurance + import tax. That's right, you have to pay VAT on the import tax. £190.49 + £15.24 = £205.73 and that's what the 20% will be due on. In this case, £41.15.

5) Total cost =
£190.49 for the shoes + insurance + tax,
£15.24 for import tax
£41.15 for VAT

Total = £246.88.

10) Finally, add on whatever the courier fee was (which is detailed in the article above).

Of course, back in the pre-brexit days, you'd have paid for the shoes on adidas.de and the price would have incorporated the 19% VAT rate in Germany and that would have been that. We've left the customs union AND the single market, hence all the new taxes.

Another problem is finding a retailer that can even be bothered to send to the UK any more. Smaller traders William Shatner (as in Captain Kirk) recently attacked the UK's new VAT laws, saying for small retailers such as him (presumably he sends out fan merchandise) it becomes cost prohibitive - see https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/brexi...s-gone-before/ for more. Another example is the UK company "Ethical Cheese" which went viral in the past few days because it has suspended all shipments to Northern Ireland as the paperwork admin destroys their profit margins (you can read more about that on their site here: https://www.theethicaldairy.co.uk/bl...and-deliveries).

[Dave2002]

Of course, back in the pre-brexit days, you'd have paid for the shoes on adidas.de and the price would have incorporated the 19% VAT rate in Germany and that would have been that. We've left the customs union AND the single market, hence all the new taxes.

It seems complicated, but aren't there just apps and programs to do all this? These procedures should be automated. Why do customers have to get involved? A few ebayers (not necessarily commercial) might need to check this out, but otherwise isn't this just all technical detail which should be somehow embodied within the commerce system? After all, if we buy a hardware device - e.g. CD player, TV etc., how often do we bother to check what IC chips and software it has inside it, or what industrial machine tools and automated production lines were used to create it?

[Oh - dear - now I've given some gnome in an office somewhere an idea as to how to make our lives even more complicated and tedious .... ]

The CN 22 form which I saw on my package - as yet unopened - also has bar codes on - presumably with some of the same data which is printed. Hopefully (but not necessarily) this means that the data is read and checked by computer systems, and the supposedly appropriate action is then taken during the transport and delivery procedures.

[oddoneout]

It seems complicated, but aren't there just apps and programs to do all this? These procedures should be automated. Why do customers have to get involved? A few ebayers (not necessarily commercial) might need to check this out, but otherwise isn't this just all technical detail which should be somehow embodied within the commerce system? After all, if we buy a hardware device - e.g. CD player, TV etc., how often do we bother to check what IC chips and software it has inside it, or what industrial machine tools and automated production lines were used to create it?

[Oh - dear - now I've given some gnome in an office somewhere an idea as to how to make our lives even more complicated and tedious .... ]

The CN 22 form which I saw on my package - as yet unopened - also has bar codes on - presumably with some of the same data which is printed. Hopefully (but not necessarily) this means that the data is read and checked by computer systems, and the supposedly appropriate action is then taken during the transport and delivery procedures.

The customer may not have to get involved directly with the nuts and bolts, but for now everything is more than a little chaotic and so the impact is being felt. Part of the difficulty(and possibly a larger part than was first thought) is that a great many businesses will not have had to deal with any of this before - in the same way that not all business is, or has to be, VAT registered in this country. There may well be IT solutions to much of it, but there is a limit to what can be prepared for if the actual conditions are unknown beforehand, and so it will take time. Businesses in this country are being told to use customs agents to help them sort out the admin - fine if the cost can be absorbed and if such a person is available in the first place - there is a very large shortfall in Gove's 50 000. There may well be a similar problem for the EU countries which after all have similarly not needed to do any of this before unless they also traded outside the bloc.
If the origin of components hasn't been part of a company's concern before it will take time to factor that in. Where a given component part may come from more than one place,depending perhaps on supply or price, that now becomes a potential hold-up if one source is accepted and another not, and what about the tracking to identify which completed items have which component?

[Dave2002]

Re my earlier sentence "How often do we bother to check what IC chips and software it has inside it, or what industrial machine tools and automated production lines were used to create it?" of course the US did concern itself about exports to other countries, and took steps to ensure that computers and other equipment wasn't going go eastern bloc countries - either directly or indirectly - because of the chips that some machines contained.