southerndownhill.com - Forum

Hey, I recently bought an aline 05 from the US for

Thats great, im sure that will make everyones evening now you have told us all.

That is good. I think bike tax is about 4.7% added on to the value of the bike, then the VAT is an extra 17.5% added on top of that total. You can get some amazing deals on importing from abroad, but can be caught out easily too. Guess you were one of the ones that slipped through the net. Enjoy your new ride...

Thanks the onlt bad thing was the shipping at

He probably only put a low value on it.
Thats great and will get around taxes until they catch you or the bike gets damaged/goes missing.
If the declared value is

...real pot luck situation really as there are loads of variables.

I've got away with valuable stuff with minimal costs... frames, forks etc. and been really spanked on lesser/2nd hand stuff that would've worked out cheaper if I'd sourced it here...

illegal maybe?

Thanks for the info... i've passed it on to HM Customs & Excise... ;D

...and I've passed it on to HM Revenue & Customs, which is their official title!  :P

Customs would have a field day on here if they looked back over the various - 'i got away without taxes' topics.
They could quite easily go back over the site, logging IP address' then turning up on your door. They can actually come back to a consumer upto 3 years down the line i think.
J

Yous are joking eh? please tell me you are

I'm sure everyone is, I know I was. I wouldn't want it to put a dark cloud over your Christmas!  :)

Few got a little bit worried there

when ive imported a few bits ive asked them to write the true value down as i'd rather pay a bit extra in vat and duties then risk losing a pile of cash if it went missing, due to the insured value, but thats jsut me, when i calculate a price for an import i always factor in the extra costs of taex and delivery before ordering and work out cost comparisson on these.

The guy that I import bits from puts down the value as the cost price he pays.  He then says that if anything goes missing he'll replace it without making a profit.

Seems like a good compromise to me.

Liar ;D

well you could be scared, but this topic will most likely have gone in 35 days or whatever so.. you dont have much more woryying left  ;D

my mate ordered some dirt jumper 1s and paid

marking the forks down as a gift means putting a lower value as well iirc its under

Marking a package as a ''gift'' that is valued over

Knowing someone who works for Hm Customs and Excise (or whatever its full name is!) I wouldnt worry about it half as much as you all do.

When they are seizing shipments of millions of cigarettes etc they are no where near as fussed about the tax from