zippy opened this issue on Aug 12, 2009 · 61 posts
AntoniaTiger posted Wed, 19 August 2009 at 2:05 PM
Quote - I've now finally (after numerous e-mails) received a breakdown of the charges from UPS
Note that UK customs add on an arbitary £6.35 VAT value adjustment where the shipping rate is not stated on the package, so we are paying VAT not only on the shipping charge but also on an additional £6.35 applied by UK customs.
I remember my experience of this sort of thing, many years ago. It is really important to correctly describe the goods. And "correct" in terms of UK taxes is not always obvious. For VAT, books are zero rated. A role-playing game could be classed as a book, if it wasn't in a box with a set of dice, and a special deck of cards. I had a consignment of games delivered, of which about half could have been classed as books. It was a clearance sale by the US publisher, I still got a good deal, but ouch!
It's also interesting, looking at my records, that DAZ 3D always includes a "Shipping" line in their email, while it doesn't look as though Content Paradise ever has.
The point is, it's simpler to have the line in the records for every transaction, with a zero value for a download. That's the sort of explicit nothingness that some thirty years of dealing with government forms has taught me to do. Hiding the details as a single "total value" is pretty stupid. Even if it doesn't turn out to lumber the customer with a bigger bill.