We all love America. Disneyland, the NFL (GoPats!!), Vegas, New York City, the list goes on. However, when it comes to sending parcels to the US the love affair can stop for some people.
This simply because of the issues with duty and taxes. With the United Kingdom being part of Europe sending items with in the EU is very straight forward. However, when you ship outside the EU to the rest of the world, suddenly you are faced with a whole host of taxes, thresholds and allowances.
The problem with the USA is that the allowed order value for imports is fairly low. The official current threshold is $200. Meaning if you ship an item which is valued over $200 (£131 at current exchange rate 4/1/15) your item will incur a duty charge.
This threshold is quite low compared to other countries. For example, if you were sending a parcel to Australia you would have an allowance of circa £500 ($1000AU).
Not only is the charging threshold quite low but the amount they charge differs by item and even composition of the item.
This means that products you or I would consider to be similar will often have a variance in the rate of duty charged. You can read some further information on the USA shipping service page.
Quite often, given the stringent checks made, parcels are queried at customs and can be subjected to customs’ own classification and valuation. Often resulting in the customer receiving the parcel having to visit the depot to pay the duty in order to release the parcel.
This is by far from ideal for UK retailers. The customers buying their products want to know the total cost of buying an item and this includes any possible charges. Just by offering a duty paid solution retailers will attract more international customers and ultimately sell more.
At ParcelWorks our retail clients (and individuals for that matter) have the tools to calculate duty and classify their products in out bespoke shipping platform. This streamlines the whole journey of the parcel when sending to the US.
The ParcelWorks’ system automatically applies the Harmonised Tariff Codes (HTScode) to the order in manual order entry for USA parcels and this is sent to the customs broker in the US. This also ensure that you do not have complete an additional ‘commercial invoice’ which saves a vast amount of time for the sender.
So sending a parcel to the USA can be as simple as one chooses to make it. Using a duty managed carrier like ParcelWorks will truly help you sales.