Shipping small items from Aus to UK

Hi

We are doing up a Chrysler Valiant Charger and having to order car parts from Australia and we are being stung by customs - the car and parts are for personal use - does anyone know a cheaper way of sending smallish packages to UK?

or whether we can claim back the gst in some way.

Thanks if you can help !

Australia post in an absolute rip off. I can't understand why customs are stitching you up. Are you ordering the parts from a company or eBay? How do they know if you actually owned these parts in Australia and you are bringing them over as and when needed.

I don't think there is a way around it. There are taxes to be paid over a certain amount value wise. Not sure using another company or some such will change the outcome. It's a pretty small amount you can spend UK £ wise iirc.

https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/overview

Hi

We are doing up a Chrysler Valiant Charger and having to order car parts from Australia and we are being stung by customs - the car and parts are for personal use - does anyone know a cheaper way of sending smallish packages to UK?

or whether we can claim back the gst in some way.

 

Thanks if you can help !

It's not clear what tax you're talking about when you say "claim back the gst". GST is an Australian tax. Because you are not in Australia the seller should be treating it as an export sale and should not be charging you any GST so you have no gst to claim back. If you're talking about VAT then that's a UK tax levied on all car parts (and most other items) bought in the UK - whether bought from a shop in the UK or coming by post from abroad. There's no way to avoid that if the goods are for personal use. If you had to pay it in the shops but could avoid it by buying over the web from Australia it would be unfair competition for the shops. The cost of collecting the tax on low value postal items actually exceeds the amount of tax raised but the tax on low value postal items is there to ensure a level playing field not to raise revenue. Unfortunately for Australian businesses the Australian governments doesn't care so much about a level playing field so the Australian threshold for paying tax on goods bought by mail is a lot higher.