EU Customs Duties on inks from North America

Yes, the ultimate details and cost of the imports depends on the local ways, and also on the amount of merchandise they have to deal with. Speaking of my case, in Christmas times when they’re crowded with parcels, it’s not unlikely that your shipment goes directly home without passing Customs, specially if it’s smallish and looks ‘cheap”. They simply can’t cope and just randomly pick up the more bulky and suspicious items.
Anyway, in the old days you could do yourself the Customs clearance papers, thus saving the Post Office/Courier fee, if you lived near a big city with a Customs Office. I did it several times for myself and also for the firm where I worked, It was a hassle involving a couple of hours of your time.
Nowadays, the paranoiac centralist Spanish Regime has conveyed all the imports from outside the UE in a single huge premise located near Madrid (where else they would ? ). Therefore, to avoid paying clearance fees you’d have to travel hundreds of Km. forth and back to Madrid, which is far more expensive than those 22 Euro charged by the Post Office.

yes, but to be correct - all foreign shipments will pass customs - one way or the other unless unless you directly land your stuff on shore at night........Customs waives inspection on lots of shipments and let the postal service/forwarder deliver it to your doorsteps. They have their rules and enough practice to catch lots of the more suspicious stuff. It's not much different in Germany - there are only a few locations foreign shipments enter the country - one hub is in Frankfurt but they let the shipments identified for inspection pass on to local or regional customs offices where you can pick up your orders. They mail you a notification with a copy of the address label so you know (in most cases) what it is about. Customs does not charge handling fees in Germany but would charge you storage fees if you wait for more than a few days.

We here, on the other hand use a central sorting depot for ALL postal mail entering the Country, so I asked on one occasion why my items were delayed, and they said they had approx. 3 million items to scan before they can sort them for release. (Zero fee)
It takes on average 4 weeks to clear postal customs, sometimes I forget what I've ordered...

This is an interesting conversation, we here in Australia up to now only pay our GST on goods imported that are worth more than $1k AU, but from 1 July they are going to apply the tax (10%) to all imported goods. This may not sound much but we always seem to be paying far more for stuff here anyway, most likely due to the cost of freight I guess. Anyway the joke is how the Aussie government is going to collect this tax, at this point in time they say that they are going to ask the seller to collect it for them, lol. God only knows how it would work, moons ago before we had a goods and services tax, we just had a sales tax on everything and an import duty on overseas stuff, this meant that when your parcel arrived you had to get in the car and go to the customs office and pick up your parcel, pay the duty and off you go. This simply will not work now, in those days you never bought anything from overseas that you could buy locally, but now with this so called global market place, ebay, buying stuff over the internet etc, you almost do not know where your goods are coming from. For our government to even think about increasing the customs depots in order to collect $2 bucks for a small parcel is just not feasible, hence they think that overseas companies will work for them...! In truth no one knows yet how it will all work. LOL

@jddriver, It would seem to me that the Postie is going to be the one that collects the 2 bucks, that’s how it works here on rare occasions...
You can be assured that some Mandarin in Canberra will come up with a stupid way to collect the tax that costs even more ...

I always kindly ask the seller to declare a lower parcel value and do not include any real invoices with it. Most Chinese sellers agree, and we have a deal. Most US sellers don't and do not get my money.

I don't like this, but like first posts said paying more for tax then goods worth is wrong to begin with. Especially if your stupid corrupt post soviet country, like mine is does nothing for your taxes.

In fact Lithuania is the only country in the EU that charges you medical insurance tax of 36Eur/month even if you do not have a job or income. How about this? They even charged all the 1 million emigrants from total of 3 million population that was 28 years ago that "evacuated" themselves from this corrupt country.

There's something to be said for your health care systems across the pond. Something has to pay for it, and it ain't cheap.

turbguy said:

There's something to be said for your health care systems across the pond. Something has to pay for it, and it ain't cheap.

Click to expand...

it ain't cheap, but if you had to bribe doctors for (few hundred euros) any medical attention, wait for a single special day in a month to register for doctor visit. Then you would speak differently. And don't suggest to go to private medicine, since all the stupid doctors that work in private medical practice are rally stupid. They work for 4 or more places plus the in the government owned hospitals. So the doctors having no patients (and no bribes i guess) in the government owned hospitals have to live somehow, they find 4 or more private clinics to make more money this way.

O’ Wow I reckoned @turbguy may have opened a can of worms here and it’s gotten away from ink costs, and @Smile has demonstrated he’s clearly not happy with their health care system, one has to remember:- A desert island is a great place to live till you’re in need of health care...

Excuse my deviation from the original subject. My point was to show that "high-tax areas" typically have superior services. But that may not always be the case. I have never had to pay a customs duty on anything, nor pay a VAT.

Here, my state+local sales tax is 6% (food is not taxed unless it is in a restaurant setting). My annual property tax is about 0.3% of "market valuation". There is a federal income tax, but no state or local income taxes. Fuel taxes are insanely low. Overall, taxes in this rural state are VERY low. However, since I don't reside in the nearby town of 30,000 souls (which includes the headcount of 11,000 university students)...

• I must transport my trash/garbage to the "local" landfill and pay a slight fee.
• Law enforcement is provided by the County Sheriff, a staff of 6 to 8 deputies to cover Albany County's 4,309 sq mi (11,160 km2).
• There's no professional, paid, fire department that covers my residence. It's a volunteer department about 8 miles away, who handles grassland/woodland fires only (not structures). Fire insurance isn't cheap.
  
• I have no community water or sewage. Well and septic works just fine but has an initial capital cost and infrequent maintenance cost.
• The landline works "almost" all the time. Cell phone signal is absent (or very weak). My internet speed (via line-of-sight wireless ) is limited to 850 kbbs up and down.
• "Ranch power" requires the use of a few UPS power supplies, and a back-up generator for the longer outages, while the local Rural Electric Association calls around to find out "who has the truck today".
• I have to pay additionally for local road maintenance and snow removal (about 2 miles of private gravel roads to reach a federal paved road). And, that federal road can be closed frequently due to winter weather for a day or two. Be prepared!
• I get one (1) TV station over the air, due to a repeater about 20 miles away for PBS.

BUT, I can own all the firearms I want, and pot is legal only 13 miles to the south!