I'm going to send my sister who is doing her OE in London, a parcel with a used mobile phone and a new boxed digital camera. Probably only totalling £150-200 via airmail/express mail.

Im just wondering if UK post (royal mail?) will put any customs charges or VAT on it? Should I mark it as used gift or something?
please advise,

thanks,
cheers,
Jai

In my experience it makes no difference if its marked gift or not - chances are she'll get a customs charge as well as VAT.

This depends on the parcel getting stopped though. Chances are it won't - unless its Fedex or something in which case they ALWAYS seem to charge me taxes.

Best thing to do would be to mark it as gift, and remove all retail packaging from the camera. Worth a shot.

Sometimes they are sneaky and you think you've got away with it - until an invoice pops through the letterbox 2 weeks later!

So Ill remove it from the packaging, and NOT include the invoice either.

cheers,
jai

Whatever you declare as the value will be used for the charges. I have hardly ever had stuff opened, though it's a fact that stuff gets x-rayed sometimes, thought I don't know to what extent. What you can get away with declaring depends on how you are insuring it.

By the way, remember that only GSM900/1800 phones will work over here.

Gareth

is there a threshold that they charge from?, i.e. over here if certain electronic goods exceed NZ$400 value then you are charged GST on the amount over $400...

Im thinking of insuring it for £100

jai

Anything over about £30ish I've found has a much higher chance of getting charged. I've had stuff sent that was only worth about £10-£20 and they've never stopped it.

Also remember that it's not just VAT they'll tack on top. There is a handling charge of about £10 as well.

I think the limit is £18. As well as 17.5% VAT and the handling charge there will also be duty, which tends to be 10% (in theory the duty depends on what the goods are).

damn thats crap...
hardly ever get charged here NZ, imported couple of TiVo's from US with no GST or customs / broker charges..

We do still get away with it sometimes in the UK. If the parcel is sent via the normal postal system then the postman/woman is supposed to collect the VAT and duty before deliverying the parcel. Sometimes they can't be bothered though. The new keyboard that I bought for the US the other day escaped this way (and yes it was worth more than £18).

If a parcel comes via Fedex, UPS etc then we are pretty much assured to get a bill for VAT/duty, even if the bill doesn't arrive for a couple of weeks.