Originally Posted by
Dan83bz
Never worked like that. EU was/is seen as a single country in terms of buying something, so besides paying for the shipping, there was nothing else to pay.
As I said above, at best UK will be in the position that Norway or Switzerland are now versus the EU, meaning that you cannot buy stuff from Norway or Switzerland even if for personal use and not pay VAT on it, except some small personal allowance.
For example I have few friends/former colleagues who now moved and work in Switzerland, couple of them in Geneva, and while its quite usual to cross over from Geneva to Germany for shopping (its very close to the border), you can only bring limited amounts of everything, not just alcohol but stuff like cheese, meats, whathaveyou, I believe the limit is 300 CHF and there's also specific limits like no more than 1kg of meat of any kind and the duties above those limits are VERY high effectively discouraging you to go and do your shopping across the border as it works better to just buy in Switzerland directly. It also has the positive effect that local producers can command much higher prices than they could have otherwise, which I guess is vital if they are to survive with the extreme cost of living in Switzerland.
Seems the bobble-heads finally announced some conclusion to this whole Brexit conundrum.