Finally it has arrived: the iPhone app for the Duty Calculator! Take the guesswork out of import duty now directly from your iPhone. It is absolutely smashing, it works even better than from your desktop.
You can download the app from the iTunes Apps store.
Thanks Pesh, Pieter, James & Nicola!
Happy bundling!
Andre
Hi all -
Today we launched the landed costs calculator for eBay! Now, with just one click, you can calculate the total cost of buying an item from eBay.com and shipping it to your home, including import duty & VAT! You just have to enter the eBay item ID and you will get the results immediately.
The eBay calculator is currently in beta and provides the total landed cost for an UK based eBay buyer who is evaluating a purchase of an item listed on eBay.com. The item can be located anywhere in the world. Soon we will be adding more eBay sites and other import-to countries.
The eBay calculator is the result of hard work by Pieter of Pi-Q, Nicola, Pesh of effect digital, Sean of Hexagon Consulting and Aleksandr or iTransition. Many thanks for this guys!
Happy bundling
Andre
Hi All -
We are very excited to announce that we signed an advertising agreement with American Express to promote their FX International Payments solution to the users of the Duty Calculator.
The FX International Payments Solution from American Express is quite a compelling one, especially at the rate of £1 per transaction! The FX International Payments solution is completely accessible online, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, completely secure through advanced encryption, gives access to highly competitive rates, has no set up costs or maintenance fees and you’ll have a dedicated account manager. All at £1 per transation. Wow!
You can check this offer out for yourself here.
Happy Bundling
Andre
Hi All -
We are very excited to announce that we signed an agreement with logistics provider Seko Synergy to provide great international shipping services and rates to our users of the Duty Calculator.
Many of the calculations on the Duty Calculator are of commercial nature and involve sizable imports with significant shipping costs. Now we give our Duty Calculator users the opportunity to obtain savings on their international shipping costs through our partnership with Seko Synergy. Starting with imports from China and Hong Kong, the Duty Calculator users will be able to get an instantaneous quote from Seko Synergy, and achieve significant savings on the international shipping costs whilst getting an optimal service.
Seko Synergy, a fast track 100 UK company, are the industry’s leading provider of customer focused supply chain management solutions, offering Worldwide Contract Logistics, Ocean Freight Forwarding, Global Airfreight Forwarding, Fashion Logistics Services, Cargo Management Services and Web Fulfillment Services.
The Seko Synergy logo already popped up on the bottom bar on the Duty Calculator, and the quotation system will follow soon.
Happy bundling
Andre
Hi All -
Today we passed the landmark of 10,000 registered users for the Duty Calculator! In total our users have done 15,776 calculations since the launch in late April. One of the most popular items, to our surprise, was the UGG boot.
So why are people so crazy about importing UGG boots? Simple. In the USA they retail at the official UGG online store for $180 (approx. £110), in the UK they retail for £195 including shipping and in Australia they retail for £79 including free world wide shipping! Same boots, very different prices.
Now, if you import your UGGs from Australia, you would incur no duty as the value of the boots is less than £150 (if the value would be over £150, the duty rate on UGGs would be 17%), however, you will have to fork over £11.85 for VAT. This means you can have the boots at your doorstep for a cool £90.85, a saving of more than £100!
Nice one!
Happy bundling
Andre
PS The official customs code for UGGs is 6405 9010 00. Have a look at the TARIC site and the classifying description and you understand why the Duty Calculator makes your life so easy!
Hi all -
Amidst all the flurry of the Bundle Box launch, Pesh finally managed to upload our iPhone app for the Duty Calculator. We followed each required step with great care, as outlined in Apple’s 107-page PDF on submitting your app to the apps store. Now the agonizing wait has begun. Some say it can take weeks, some say it can take months… We can only hope it will be faster than that!
Nice one Pesh!
Happy bundling
Andre
Hi All - 
Yesterday we migrated the Duty Calculator to a new server. We felt that browsing speed is very important to our users and therefore we decided to upgrade our server.
We went out and got a mighty fine server provided by Rackspace. The results are absolutely stunning, sooooooo fast. Duty calculations at warp speed! Check it out for yourself and knock yourself out at www.dutycalculator.com
Apologies for being offline for a couple of hours yesterday because of the migration.
Happy bundling
Andre
Hi all –
We get around 100 queries per week on the Duty Calculator of people calculating the duty and VAT due when importing a car or motorbike. Most cars are imported from the USA and Japan. The cars that are imported are a mix of collector cars (we had a Ford GT), cars that are simply not available in the UK, for example the Infinity FX35 or cars where there is pure price arbitrage, for example the Nissan 370z.
Almost 20% of the queries relate to intra-EU trade of cars. This is not surprising as Duty & VAT regulation for importing cars within the EU is a complicated matter.
Lets start with duty. In general there is no import duty due when importing a car from another EU member state. There are two exceptions: Portugal and Cyprus do levy an import duty on cars from within the EU.
Then there is VAT. In the EU most goods are charged with VAT in the country in which they are purchased. However for a new car, VAT will be due in the member state of destination if the car is new, or the car is sold to a customer who intends to take it to another EU member state.
A new car means here, that less than 6 months have elapsed since the date of its first entry into service or it has, since its first entry into service, travelled under its own power for more than 6000km. If the car is not new, you will not have to pay VAT if you have paid VAT on its purchase in the EU member state of supply.
Plenty more information on this you can find in the Duty Calculator FAQ and the HMRC Notice 728.
Happy bundling
Andre
Hi all -
We get a lot of queries for iPhones, iTouches and iPods on the Duty Calculator. People are importing them primarily from China, USA and Australia.
Mobile phones have no import duty, when you import them into the EU, from anywhere in the world. This applies also to the iPhone, even though it has advanced computing and video recording capabilities. What matters is that its primary use is to call people.
For the iTouches and iPods this is different. A simple iPod without video capability carries an import duty rate of 2%. The iTouch however, carries a duty rate of 13.2%, because it has video capabilities. I wonder what happens to this rate when skyping via your iTouch takes off.
All iPhones, iTouches and Ipods are subject to import VAT of 15%.
Happy bundling
Andre
Hi there
The Duty Calculator is live now for a bit over two months. As per today, we have 5325 registered users, who performed in total 7459 calculations. Since launch, we have expanded the products that the Duty Calculator covers, for example mobile phones and cars. We have improved the category structure so it is easier for our users to find the products. Also we added several countries that you can import to. The Duty Calculator now covers all Euro countries, the UK and Sweden. We are working hard to add the remaining EU countries.
The last time I wrote about the query statistics I promised to write a bit more about what our users are importing from China. Unsurprisingly, the top import categories are consumer electronics, clothing and accessories, sporting equipment and shoes.
Aside from the popular queries on finding the import duty & VAT on products like the Samsung i900, Quad band HTC T3232 Smart phone, the Scotty Cameron putters and Callaway FT-I drivers, the Dell 1330, Sony Vaio laptops and Dreambox satellite receivers, we had some interesting items:
- Sciphone (the best iPhone clone in the market, apparently)
- Zorb ball (don’t try this at home)
- Photovoltaic cell arrays (here is more info on that)
- Karaoke Santa Claus (yes, yes, you need one for Christmas)
- Swim spa and a single sit in kayak
- A real London taxi!
I was surprised to find out that the London taxis are actually made in China. There were some other queries that caused the same reaction, for example Christian Louboutin pumps. Not sure what the story is there.
Finally, again, the Uggs popped up, alongside Ausiebum. This time imported from China though, instead of Australia. I still don’t get it.
Take care, and happy bundling
Andre
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