EU citizens to buy in US

[Itaria No Shintaku]

Hello,

i beg pardon if this question has already been asked, but is there a way to avoid the customs from US sellers?

Most sellers if you ask them to write "gift" won't accept this because they say it's illegal, and I don't want to ask an illegal thing.

Is there any workaround? After all I am buying USED stuff so some people ALREADY paid taxes on those.

I am really annoyed by the fact that two people must pay taxes over the same object.

[Slegengr]

I cannot say for sure, but I am pretty sure there is not another option. It is illegal to mark a sale as a "gift" to avoid customs, as you said.

Here in America, we pay tax on the money we earn, tax on the money we spend, tax to keep the items we purchased, tax if we sell the item to someone else, and even tax on inheritance as we pass on our possessions to others. This means that trade goods are taxed multiple times, regardless of who has payed tax before. Freedom is not truly free, but I will not complain because of the standard of living made possible by this.

[Zanki]

Unless you have a friend over there who is willing to gift you stuff you are pretty much stuck. I tend to have stuff shipped to my friend if I know the extra postage charge will be less then whatever I will pay in import tax if I'm caught, but if you order from amazon.com you will pay the tax on their end and it's refunded if you aren't taxed on import, so you will be taxed a few pounds, but you wont get the stupid extra £8 charge from the Royal Mail. I don't mind paying taxes on imports, it's the £8 Royal Mail fee that annoys me. It's even worse if an item comes UPS or something.

[Sven F]

Don't know about Italy, but our customs office completely ignores the "gift" part on the parcel, so even if they did want to write this, it wouldn't get you out of paying. Almost all Chinese sellers write "gift" by default. Even if it is illegal, it's probably nothing anyone would be likely to get in trouble for, but its useless.

[Zanki]

Gift also doesn't get you out of it entirely in the UK, I think there is a £30 limit or something because I've been charged before now on a gift I've received. The best you can do is ask a seller to undervalue your product so it's under £13, but if something happens and it gets lost, you won't have insurance on the item which is a big deal.

[snowvictim]

Simplest, but most expensive way around it is simply to fly to the US, buy what you need, then come back and pray you don't get checked on customs clearance. I think even if you did get selected for a search it wouldn't be a problem, they're not really concerned that much with stuff like Lego. Mostly drugs/alcohol since taxes vary in different countries resulting in a range of prices for these products, which can then be sold in a country for quite a significant profit margin.

But I think it's worth noting what you're ordering. In the UK, there's no duty/excise payable for items of that cost less than 135GBP. When I'm in Poland I order stuff from the USA/Canada because the threshold is higher, so I can get more stuff without paying duty. When I'm in the UK I order all the stuff from the rest of the EU and Australia (excluding Poland) just because shipping is cheaper (greater volume of trade). I'm not exactly sure about Italian customs, you'd have to inspect that yourself on your government's customs & revenue site, but EU law is becoming more standardised so there may be a good chance that you can order somethings cheaper.

Last possible solution - relatives in the USA. You can wire the money to some family member or friend in the USA, ask them to buy it, get them to ship it as a gift. This is non-taxable as the object of shipment does not originate from a financial transaction, therefore is not liable to taxation.

Word of advice though - I tend to avoid buying stuff from the USA, particulalry from BrickLink. I've never gotten anything from BrickLink from the USA, prices aren't that attractive and you pay a lot for shipping. Only bought some hookah tobacco from California once, shipping took 2.5 weeks.