Reply With QuoteThink they should only charge UK VAT on goods (+postage?) up to £135. Above that should be VAT free and HMRC will collect it.
Buying in the UK from Victorinox.com, import VAT and Customs Duty ?
Has anyone in the UK purchased from the Victorinox website after January this year?
Here is what has happened so far:
(1) I've recently bought two penknives from the Victorinox.com website in a single order. Specifically the website was www.victorinox.com/uk/en, which is the UK store. I have not yet received the penknives.
(2) Victorinox have charged me £352.00 (including free P&P and VAT) for these two items.
(3) No invoice is available from the website but the order summary page shows the order value of £352.00 with the term "incl. VAT". It does not show how much VAT was included.
(4) According to the www.victorinox.com/uk/en Ts&Cs, "The prices quoted are retail prices in Pounds Sterling (GBP) and include the applicable value-added tax.". It does not say anywhere which country's VAT they think is applicable. Also according to the Ts&Cs, the website is operated by "Victorinox Retail AG, Schmiedgasse 57, CH-6438 Ibach-Schwyz, Switzerland".
(5) However, according to www.victorinox.com/uk/en Legal Notice, the items are sent from "Victorinox Retail AG, c/o PVS Fulfillment-Service GmbH, Werner-Haas-Strasse 5, 74172 Neckarsulm (Germany)". A German VAT number of DE292114109 is listed.
(6) Since they are exporting from Germany to the UK under the current rules, they should (as far as I know) EITHER have signed up to UK VAT and charged me UK VAT at 20% OR they should have charged me the price excluding local German VAT (thus allowing UK customs to charge me the 20% UK VAT, Customs Duty, and fee at the time of import). As a consumer outside of Germany and the EU I should not be paying German VAT.
(7) By chance, however, I have been able to ascertain that they have in fact charged me German VAT at 19%! (I was able to ascertain this by chance via Topcashback: This shows a sum of cashback based on a transaction value of £295.80, which is the price of £352.00 less 19% German VAT. I.e. £295.80 + 19% = £352.00).
(8) Worse, UK customs have now raised a customs fee to pay. I do not yet know how much this is or what it consists of (i.e. what mix of VAT, Customs Duty, fees, or on what net value it is based).
Has anyone been here and experienced this?
As I note above in (6), Victorinox (or their German order handler) should as far as I know either have prepaid UK VAT at 20% or (most likely) charged me the rate net of German VAT (i.e. excluding German VAT). So I should have been charged £295.80, not £352.00.
UK gov.uk info page here: https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty
I should also add that the Victorinox website warns at checkout that "Shipments to UK over £ 135.00 are subject to customs or duties" which is of course correct. However, it does not mean that they should be charging their UK customers German VAT!
I'll update this info when I get the tax demand from Parcelforce.
Last edited by markrlondon; 29th September 2021 at 13:38.
Think they should only charge UK VAT on goods (+postage?) up to £135. Above that should be VAT free and HMRC will collect it.
I'm surprised that Victorinox are not set up to deduct local VAT at source (or charge you the correct UK VAT). I'm also surprised at the cost of 2 penknives (I'm out by a factor of 10!) - but these must be some serious "do it all" knives.
I'm interested to hear how you get on.
Yes, that is broadly my understanding.Originally Posted by Kingstepper
Either way, they should not have charged German VAT.
Yes, me too.
But they (or their German shippers in this case) are not the only EU company who don't seem to be able to get it right (as far as I can tell so far).
As I say, I'll update this info when I get the tax demand from Parcelforce. Who knows... the tax demand might just be for the Customs Duty and not the already-paid VAT. Or maybe it will be for Customs Duty plus the difference between 19% VAT paid so far and 20% UK VAT.
One of them is a "1.6795.XXL". It's more of a collector's piece than anything that one might actually use.
It is indeed a beast that one. Reviews are a tad mixed on tool accessibility (more fool them trying to actually use it perhaps!), preferring the XAVT - I'll keep my eyes peeled for your feedback.
This stuff is a huge pain in the hoop and I have had to switch to buying things from EU companies rather than trusted and reliable UK sources this year :(
I hope you get this sorted out, but I have found the parcel companies very poor in terms of customer service. I recently paid 40 euros in duty & taxes to import a watch from Japan. Weeks later, I received an invoice saying I owed 25 euros. I contacted them and told them I'd already paid more than that, so they just told me to ignore the invoice (which I could easily have just paid). I didn't even bother pointing out that it appeared they owed ME 15 euros as they overcharged me the first time. Needless to say, they chose not to notice that either.
Last edited by barneygumble; 29th September 2021 at 14:31.
Can’t see them just charging you the difference in VAT if the VAT hasn’t already been paid to them.
Worst case would be you’re charged VAT on the purchase price + German VAT.. .
I can help on this matter as I made a purchase the other week and was surprised to see it was shipped from Germany.
My purchase was about half yours and got charged customs duty, clearance fee and VAT adding roughly 50% to the purchase cost.
My order was also under the £135 limit for VAT so was surprised to pay VAT On the import.
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Last edited by Mad14; 29th September 2021 at 18:38.
Did the retailer charge VAT too?
the gift that keeps on giving..hope you manage to get a resolution OP..
Yeah they charged VAT at 19% as well.
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Looks like it’s the retailers fault then, maybe haven’t registered with UK authorities and understandable that HMRC have correctly charged UK VAT.
Think all depends on retailer, if no mention of UK VAT being charged I’d avoid TBH. My experience buying from France recently was very slick, correctly charged UK VAT by retailer and that was it, as if buying locally.
Yeah that does look to be an issue. Paying VAT twice is expensive.
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I'm not sure sure where you're located but did you mean that to be the other way round? If I'd bought from a UK company this would not be an issue but I chose to buy direct from the original source (and assumed that they'd have their exporting sorted out).
In theory there should be no difficulty. In principle, buying from the EU should be just like buying from anywhere else in the world.
However, two things seem to have complicated it:
(1) The incompetence (or poor education, perhaps) of some EU businesses when exporting to the UK (they often seen unsure of what VAT to charge and where to send it).
(2) Unsurprisingly, the UK government. They introduced a VAT prepayment scheme that resulted in confusion all round. It requires foreign companies to register for UK VAT and was never going to end well and in my experience it's often much better, even now, if the foreign companies do not register and carry on as before. (It's not just the UK though; the EU and possibly other countries have implemented similar, costly, fiddly schemes).
We'll see what tax demand Parcelforce send me. So far nothing has arrived from them.
Last edited by markrlondon; 1st October 2021 at 22:13.
From what I can tell, foreign companies can register to charge UK VAT (and not just for purchases under the £135 threshold) and remit it to UK government. One might have expected them to charge 20% if that was the case but who knows.
Yup. That is in fact what I am expecting. But I've not yet received the Parcelforce tax demand so we'll see.
Did you buy from Victorinox too?
As far as I can tell so far, Victorinox (or their German shipping company) have done with me what you experienced above: They appear to have charged me 19% German VAT which they should not have done.
I've still not received the tax demand letter from Parcelforce.
And entering the xxxxxxxxxxxGB UK tracking code (which, last time I did this, should also be the tax payment reference) on the Parcelforce website shows me "There has been an error with this payment. Please contact Parcelforce Customer Services on 0344 800 44 66 for investigation."
An error. No kidding.
Will update when I find out more.
** Update **
Ah, it seems likely that the import tax payment reference is NOT the parcel tracking number. That would be too simple. So I just have to wait for the paper letter.
Last edited by markrlondon; 1st October 2021 at 22:25. Reason: Fixed error
Yeah I purchased direct from the Victorinox website believing it was a UK site how it was advertised.
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I think my letter took 3 days to arrive after the charges were raised.
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The EU country that we share a land border with, I believe. It's the right way round.
For 'everyday' Swiss Army Knives I now use swisstool.co.uk which works out a lot less expensive than direct from Victorinox.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
Probably easier to buy from Heinnie Haynes.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Do you have any tracking number at all? Foreign numbers usually work in the RM system (if they are local carriers here), maybe Parcelforce too?
Thanks.
In my case, I was aware that the site was in Switzerland (although I didn't see that the shipper was in Germany until I looked later, not that that should have made any difference) but I expected and hoped that they'd get the tax issues right.
We'll see... this might still be a fuss over nothing. I'll find out when the tax demand arrives.
Thanks.
I now seem to recall from previous experience that, despite the tax being calculated at the point of entry, the demand letter is (as far as I can recall) only sent when the item reaches the local delivery depot. This delays things further.
Last edited by markrlondon; 4th October 2021 at 08:22.
I did look at them and regrettably they don't stock the XXL.
Annoyingly they've also been showing the XAVT for a very long time but it's never likely to come back into stock.
** Update **
Sorry, I now note you said 'everyday' SAKs. Yes, they seem to have good prices for everyday ones.
** edit **
Apologies. I had somehow mixed up the quoting on this message. Now fixed.
Last edited by markrlondon; 5th October 2021 at 08:20. Reason: Fixed quoting error
In retrospect yes, probably. But I chose Victorinox for the manufacturer's boutique experience. ;-)
Who knows, when the tax demand arrives it may all have been calculated correctly. I might be fussing over nothing. We'll see.
Last edited by markrlondon; 4th October 2021 at 08:41.
Yes, but the tracking number is not the tax payment reference.
The item was shipped from Germany by DHL with a standard German postal service DE-suffix tracking code. When Parcelforce got it in the UK, they gave it a GB-suffix tracking code. One might expect that the GB-suffix code would would be useable to pay the import tax but this is not so: The tax payment reference is (from gradually returning memory and somewhere on the Parcelforce website) a 17 digit all-numeric code. And I won't know that until I get the paper tax demand in the post.
Last edited by markrlondon; 4th October 2021 at 08:44.
What I always do is check tracking code regularly and when at local office go along with credit card and collect.
Saves couple of days waiting for letter.
For me, this can work for Royal Mail items as my local Delivery Office is just a short walk away.
However, for Parcelforce this isn't so feasible for me. There is a single depot for the whole of north west London which is not practical for me to easily get to by public transport. It's in Acton W3 and I'm in Cricklewood NW2. Only a few miles overall but way more hassle than just waiting a few days. Usually I wouldn't be in such a hurry but this one is very annoying.
Post just arrived; still no Parcelforce tax demand.
I bought a couple of victorimox Alox from the Uk victorinox site in about June and just paid the price on the website, no extra Vat or bills since then. Seem cheaper on Amazon (though they don’t carry the full range obviously)
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How much was the order? If it was under £135 then I suspect they would have got it right.
Also, Amazon UK doesn't stock the 1.6795.XXL which is one of the the specific penknives I wanted.
To be fair, in my case it may all work out ok in the end. I am hoping the tax demand will arrive today and I'll know for sure then.
Last edited by markrlondon; 5th October 2021 at 08:35.
It was about £60 - a couple of Alox Pioneers - so well under!
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The post arrived rather late yesterday and the Parcelforce tax demand was there!
It is the worst case scenario. The import tax calculations have been based on the total figure of £352.00 (although see below) which includes the wrongly charged German VAT.
As I mentioned before, the Victorinox website order summary shows the figure I paid of £352.00 as "incl. VAT" which is certainly the case, but it turns out that it was German VAT which I should not have been charged. And their Ts&Cs claim to "include the applicable value-added tax" which is wholly untrue: The VAT they actually charged was not applicable to me, a non-EU consumer, at all.
Worse, the Parcelforce/Border Force/HMRC import tax calculations are actually based on a supposed net figure of £360.00. I don't know where that came from, other than that Border Force presumably must have rounded up from the actual figure of £352.00 to £360.00 or perhaps the German shipping agent made a mistake on the customs declaration.
Want to know how much is due? Here it is:
Customs Duty: £30.60
Import VAT: £78.12
Fee: £12.00
Total: £120.72
As usual, the Parcelforce figures don't show percentage rates charged or the net value their calculations were based on but these can be easily worked out from the numbers above. I'll do this below for those who are interested.
As things stand, I have been overcharged £56.20 by Victorinox (for their wrongly charged German VAT) and HMRC/Border Force/Parcelforce want me to overpay by £19.39 due to their tax calculation based upon Victorinox's overcharge. See [1] for the import taxes I should have paid had Victorinox charged me the correct amount.
Here is how I worked out the Parcelforce/Border Force/HMRC Customs Duty percentage rate and their spurious net base amount:
(1) The amount of import VAT due is 20% of the sum of the net amount and the Customs Duty due. So we know that the sum of net and Customs Duty must be £78.12 / 0.2 = £390.60.
(2) The net amount is the previous number (£390.60) less the Customs Duty: £390.60 - £30.60 = £360.00. (As I mentioned, the actual net amount was £352.00 and so either the German shipping agent filled in the customs declaration incorrectly or Border Force rounded up from £352.00 to £360.00).
(3) The percentage rate of Customs Duty charged is the amount of Customs Duty (£30.60) divided by the net amount we found (£360.00): £30.60 / £360.00 = 8.5%. This matches the rate I expected.
Footnote:-
1: For comparison, here are the import taxes I should have been charged had Victorinox charged me the correct amount, net of German VAT, of £295.80:
Customs Duty: £25.14 (8.5%)
Import VAT: £64.19 (20% of £320.94, which is £295.80 + £25.14)
Fee: £12.00
Total: £101.33
Last edited by markrlondon; 6th October 2021 at 07:11.
So, what am I going to do?
I could contact Victorinox and try to persuade them to refund me the wrongly charged German VAT. What do you think? Likely to be successful? Seems like a probable hiding to nothing.
Even if the above was successful, I'd still need to pay the current import taxes due and then try to get the £19.39 overpayment on those refunded. Whilst Border Force have in my experience been helpful in issuing refunds in the case of their own errors, this one is more complicated. They have in fact correctly calculated the taxes due on the basis of the declaration given to them (apart from apparently rounding up the net basis from £352 to £360).
The obvious alternative is to wait for Parcelforce to send the item back and then eventually get a full refund out of Victorinox. Luckily I paid via PayPal and so I can force a refund that way should it be necessary.
As an aside, I presume that the package includes a paper invoice. I'd love to see what is written on that (e.g. how much VAT paid and to whom) but I can't get to see that unless I pay the current import taxes due.
In the meantime, the takeaway point is this:
IF YOU ARE IN THE UK, DO NOT PLACE ORDERS VALUED AT MORE THAN £135 FROM VICTORINOX.COM.
THEY WILL OVERHCHARGE YOU BY WRONGLY CHARGING GERMAN VAT AT 19% AND, AS A CONSEQUENCE, FORCE YOU TO PAY MORE UK IMPORT TAXES THAN SHOULD BE DUE.
What do you think I should do?
In summary, I am being required to overpay by a total of £75.59 (£56.20 overcharge by Victorinox plus £19.39 extra import taxes).
Last edited by markrlondon; 6th October 2021 at 07:15.
A right mess, I’d call them 020 3734 9264.
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I think that this kind of thing is happening a lot, and in both directions. Sadly it doesn't come as much of a surprise.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
I would not pay and get a full refund (barring any small FX movements). The knives would always remind me of the ridiculous overcharge / incompetence and annoy me. Try to buy from another route or start communications and try to get V to fix it before you order again. Bloody Brexit.
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That's no excuse and, in my humble opinion, it still is simple overall, especially for orders like this one.
What has happened here is a matter of incompetence on the part of Victorinox and/or the part of their German shipping agent.
It is worth understanding, and I'd have thought you'd know this, that it has always worked this way: An exporter charges the VAT-exclusive price to customers outside their own tax jurisdiction. For EU businesses[1] nothing at all has changed in the case of an order of this size. They shipped (or should have shipped) using VAT-exclusive prices to non-EU customers before Brexit and they should still ship orders like this one using VAT-exclusive prices to non-EU customers after Brexit. Brexit has not changed the EU's own VAT rules[2].
All that has changed is that the UK had left the EU, just like most of the rest of the world is not part of the EU. This can hardly be news and it can't be that difficult to get one's head round, especially for exporting businesses.
I do agree that the UK government's thing of wanting foreign companies to sign up to charge UK VAT for orders below £135 is a right idiotic hassle, confuses some people, and certainly should not have been implemented concurrently with Brexit (with which it is not fundamentally related). But:
(a) Professional shipping companies should be able to get their heads around it.
(b) The EU has created identical legislation so the UK government is hardly alone in its cretinous extraterritorial meddling.
(c) Whether or not the foreign exporting company has signed up for the new UK VAT rules, they do not affect this order. And there is every sign that Victorinox or their shippers are in fact able to successfully manage the new UK rules for orders under £135 anyway.
(d) And most importantly: There is no reason whatsoever, regardless of order size, to charge German/EU VAT on an order being sold to a non-EU customer and, as I observe, this was the case both before Brexit and after Brexit.
Footnotes:-
1: Or Swiss businesses who, as in this case, choose to ship via an EU-based shipping agent.
2: As far as I know. Correct me if wrong.
Last edited by markrlondon; 6th October 2021 at 09:29.
I'm moving this way. I don't want to pay any more than I have done.
I will contact them to find out why they think charging German VAT is appropriate to a non-EU customer and to let them know I will be letting the items be returned for a refund, but I don't expect to get any rational answers out of them. I'll pass on here what I find out.
This isn't really a directly Brexit-related issue, although I can understand why people incorrectly perceive it to be such. The fact is that the EU VAT rules that relate to this order did not change at all.
Here is a little more as to why "Brexit, woooo" is not an excuse in this case:
When selling to a non-EU customer, Victorinox's German shipping agent should never have charged German VAT on this order under the EU's VAT rules. These rules are unchanged both before and after Brexit. This was always the case. It is the case now.
What has changed, of course, is that the UK has left the EU as part of Brexit but Victorinox and the shipping agents (presumably!) know that. So they should just charge the VAT-exclusive price to UK customers, just as they always did to any other non-EU customers. In that respect, that is to say the rules that they operate under, things have not changed due to Brexit.
It really is that simple.
As such, this isn't a problem with Brexit. It is a problem with incompetence in the case of people who should know better as professional exporters. It is they who have complicated things, not Brexit.
Do they charge German VAT to non-EU customers in, say, Ecuador? One would expect not. So what makes them think that charging German VAT to another non-EU country's customer would make any more sense?
As an aside (because it doesn't affect this order) see my previous message for a comment about the UK government's desire for foreign companies to sign up to charge UK VAT for orders under £135. Ironically, it would seem that Victorinox and their German shipping agent are able to operate this far more complex scheme successfully, even though it is relatively new. Note also that even if they had applied that scheme to this order, they still should not have charged German VAT.
Last edited by markrlondon; 6th October 2021 at 10:03.
I will be contacting them.
I'll pass on what I find out.
In my experience foreign companies don’t usually take off their own VAT (or equivalent), thinking of Japan and Australia for example. Little experience of buying in Europe since Brexit but maybe this is the norm?
In the EU it most certainly is the norm. :-)
Last edited by markrlondon; 6th October 2021 at 10:09.
Quite possibly. It used to happen to me all the time when I was living in Colombia and even in Switzerland. Few companies, even large ones, seemed to have it nailed down. Some deducted VAT at source, some only when I showed proof of delivery in the destination country and some just were not interested. It doesn't seem to matter how simple a process is. It didn't bother me too much as I was tax exempt in those countries so only paid one lot.
I never said that it was an excuse, just that it happens and I'm not surprised based on experience of living in a non-EU country.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
You may want to share this info on the https://forum.multitool.org/index.php forum , and see if any UK members have had the same happen to them?
Then the vendors who were guilty of this really were grossly incompetent. It amazes me that such ignorance can still exist. It is such a well known principle (at least it was to me when I last ran a business where this was a concern!) that I find it difficult to imagine how any business that has ever exported to foreign countries outside the EU (or, even perhaps, has done cross-border B2B sales within the EU) would not know it.
Noted.
Thanks. I'll take a look there.
I have bought some Swiss Army Knife bits from a German vendor and they were VAT zero rated for export.
What I have discovered from this thread is that there is also 8.5% duty on knives.
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Whilst I sympathise Mark, and agree with you in principle, if you totalled up the time spent doing research, calculations and posts here, it may well be worth more than the £120 in dispute
My own course of action (if I lived in GB) would have been a two minute email to the retailer requesting a refund of the German vat and to hell with the other few quid. Life’s too short
ROFL! I'm clearly not as wealthy as you. Lucky you to not have to care about being ripped off. ;-)
Last edited by markrlondon; 6th October 2021 at 14:51.
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