[article] Christmas parcels confiscated in Revenue VAT clampdown

Padraig Mor

Article from today's Examiner regarding the Revenue clampdown on tax on packages from outside the EU. I was quite interested in this bit:
"Revenue is using its legal right to open any parcels which do not have an invoice attached to the outside of the package"
Wonder if it means that they cannot open a package with an external invoice regardless of the value declared?

link: http://www.examiner.ie/irishexaminer/pages/story.aspx-qqqg=ireland-qqqm=ireland-qqqa=ireland-qqqid=21068-qqqx=1.asp

Christmas parcels confiscated in Revenue VAT clampdown

By Conor Ryan
CHRISTMAS presents sent through the post are being confiscated by the Revenue Commissioners until the recipients pay VAT charges and postal handling fees — or parcels are returned to sender.


Revenue has collected hundreds of thousands of euro from people availing of cheaper CDs and DVDs on the internet by forcing them to pay customs duty and value added tax, plus a €5 post office fee on items bought from companies outside the EU and posted to this country. Failure to pay the tariff means items are sent back.

The charges can often amount to 50% or more of the item’s original cost.

In order to detect offenders, Revenue is using its legal right to open any parcels which do not have an invoice attached to the outside of the package at mailing centres in Dublin, Cork, Athlone and Portlaoise.

According to Revenue, there has been an increase in the number of confiscations of packages containing CDs, DVDs and computer games arriving by post from Jersey, Hong Kong, China and the US and 235 such packages have been detained.

Duty and VAT collected amounted to €3,752 and 72 packages are stored at the letter post depot in Dublin.

“Portlaoise parcel-post office has collected €1.375 million in duty and VAT on parcels this year to date,” a Revenue spokesman said.

“Revenue staff at our mailing centres in Dublin, Cork, Athlone and Portlaoise scan all third country post and parcels and raise charges as part of their normal routine work. All post is targeted.”

He said An Post acts as its agent in processing parcels, but An Post pointed out that Revenue staff are working at the mailing centres.

Jersey is home to one of the most widely-used internet product companies, Play.com while Hong Kong is home to CDWow.com.

Products bought from any internet product company outside the EU, including the likes of Amazon, would be subject to the taxation.

Play.com declined to comment but Dermott Jewell of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland said the Revenue Commissioners are simply enforcing the law, something they have not done in past years, and consumers must be aware that they should pay tax on items worth over €45.

“Our advice would be not to have goods sent in bulk but to have them sent individually. If the Revenue sees a batch of 50 DVDs they are not going to think it is for personal use but for re-sale.”

Ruu_Old

Thanks Padraig, copied over to Consumer Issues also.

Paulw

CD-WOW always ship items individually anyway.

But, just something to be aware of.

dahamsta

Padraig Mor wrote:

Wonder if it means that they cannot open a package with an external invoice regardless of the value declared?

Possibly not, but Customs can, and I'm pretty sure they're controlled by the Revenue, so...

quad_red

Paulw wrote:

CD-WOW always ship items individually anyway.

But, just something to be aware of.

Something that Play don't do. So order items individually!

MrPudding

quad_red wrote:

Something that Play don't do. So order items individually!

Yes they do.

MrP

MOH

Thought the limit was €22?

2funki4wheelz

€45 for gifts - as per the original thread in Online Buying

VeeEmmy

Maybe this is why I had no Christmas pressies from family in America this year, even though they were posted in time (normally) for them to arrive before the 24th.

God forbid they should hire more staff to expedite their heightened search, seizure and gouge operation.

The more money they say we are making here, the greedier the govt becomes.

Ban

Cabaal

MrPudding wrote:

Yes they do.

MrP

Play.com do indeed ship all items separate, I've never seen them ship a number of items in one box or parcel

Hagar

It's all part of the Governmental Revenue Increased National Checking & Handling Policy. GRINCH for Short.

daywalker

Cabaal wrote:

Play.com do indeed ship all items separate, I've never seen them ship a number of items in one box or parcel

I've received a couple of items from play, where the items were bundled together (not bundle offers) , though have noticed now that they tend to process items separately. Could this be a policy to save their Irish customer base?