Transcript for Episode 11 - Understand duties and taxes
Duties are a levy charged on goods entering a country, designed to both protect local industries against foreign competition and to generate revenue. They are collected by customs officials.
Sales tax or VAT is a national charge placed on most purchased products. In some countries like the UK, certain products can be exempt from VAT.
Generally duties and taxes will have an impact on the cost of your goods to sellers. So it’s important to be clear on how much these charges amount to.
Your product's country of origin
The origin of your product is important because it can have an impact on the amount of duty or tax that needs to be paid. And it is something you'll be required to declare.
HMRC has clear rules on this, which covers both manufacturing and reselling. So you’ll need to get a statement on the origin of the goods from your supplier.
How duty is calculated
To calculate the amount of duty that will be levied, you need to first find out the HS code of your product. HS codes, or to give them their full title, harmonised system codes, can sometimes be referred to as a commodity or tariff code.
You can look them up on gov.uk. They will display the percentage of duty which applies to the code, and all other charges or regulations which are associated with it.
Once you have this figure, add together the value of your goods, the freight costs and any other additional costs relating to the shipment. And multiply this figure by the total duty percentage.
Sales tax or VAT is a national charge placed on most purchased products. In some countries like the UK, certain products can be exempt from VAT.
Generally duties and taxes will have an impact on the cost of your goods to sellers. So it’s important to be clear on how much these charges amount to.
Your product's country of origin
The origin of your product is important because it can have an impact on the amount of duty or tax that needs to be paid. And it is something you'll be required to declare.
HMRC has clear rules on this, which covers both manufacturing and reselling. So you’ll need to get a statement on the origin of the goods from your supplier.
How duty is calculated
To calculate the amount of duty that will be levied, you need to first find out the HS code of your product. HS codes, or to give them their full title, harmonised system codes, can sometimes be referred to as a commodity or tariff code.
You can look them up on gov.uk. They will display the percentage of duty which applies to the code, and all other charges or regulations which are associated with it.
Once you have this figure, add together the value of your goods, the freight costs and any other additional costs relating to the shipment. And multiply this figure by the total duty percentage.
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