Hi,
>Ireland has 21% VAT but I am not sure they collect on small amounts due to
the
>administrative cost making it uneconomic. I have bought a couple of things
from the
>US that were not terribly expensive and I was not charged anything.
Over here in The Netherlands it's 25%, the "tax-free" amount is f 65,- (+/-
$32.50), i.e. over the rest of the _declared_ value you pay 25%. I was faced
with this problem when I bought 2 lenses and some other equipment in one go.
The total actual amount came down to some $450, and since I already pay
_quite_ a substantial amount in income taxes I didn't feel like letting our
state profit too much on my newly acquired 2nd handed(!) equipment.
Therefore I had a long think and decided to take a risk and have the value
of the total package declared to be only $200. This way the USPS and Dutch
PTT knew that the package contains expensive (and insured) fragile
equipment, so they will treat it with some care. Next, when the package
arrives at customs, it will not look suspicious since $200 probably sounds
like a fair price to them for 2nd handed equipment (I didn't want to risk
declaring only $30 and then having them check out the prices of what these
lenses would sell for over here ;) ). This worked great for me, the package
arrived in good health and I "only" had to pay some $40 in taxes, which
makes the whole deal a LOT cheaper than trying to find the same stuff over
here.
Question: if anyone (Frank maybe?) knows some good/cheap places for Oly
equipment over here please let me know...
>Hypotheticly, if you were to send an item of your equipment to the US for
repair and
>then it was returned to you clearly marked as a retuned repair, would you
be charged
>VAT? ;-)
Hmmm, I don't know, but I think as soon as you declare the value you're
screwed; I might be mistaken though...
Cheers!
Olaf
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