UK business shipping internationally

[John84]

Hi,

I’m currently working on a pulling together a brand selling fashion accessories based in the Uk (England).

When I’m looking at similar businesses they offer free shipping to a whole host of countries with some exclusions (not exactly sure why) with a statement that the buyer would need to cover import duty/taxes.

If I’m looking to do this, I’d like to think I could capture this cost as a flat cost no matter where my customer was based. Is this even possible? If I’m sending it to france or chile, Can you get a same rate service?

How do you then make sure that taxes are picked up by the buyer? Id hate to have the worry of a load of import duty bills would land at my feet!

Many thanks in advance,

John

 

[Deleted member 335660]

Hi John,

Simple answer is I very much doubt it. I live in Spain and can send up to 10kg anywhere in Spain for €7. However 1kg to France is €14.

It cost me €70 to get 10kg from Czech Republic and €140 for Korea.

With such diverse costs I doubt you could use a flat rate.

I work with some big dropshippers and they can send things all round Europe on flat rates but that is because they have manufacturing units around Europe and choose the best for each order.

 

[fisicx]

Whilst many UK stores offer international delivery in reality it rarely happens. These options are usually built into the application but not disabled by the site administrator.

Simplest solution is to only offer products for sale in the UK. Saves you a whole load of hassle and possible import duty to pay.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Maybe your comparing China suppliers with so called outlets in the UK, they dispatch from China which is still seen as a special need country by a old world wide postal agreement where they pay peanuts for sending goods outside their country and the Royal Mil are expected to deliver them her for next to nothing. The US has been fighting this but so far nothing has changed

 

[capacitum.com]

Don't be put off if your are holding stock and not offering a drop ship service.
There is a process to go through but it's definitely worth it. The EU is far bigger than the UK and a lot more sales can be achieved.
To sell in the EU and get past all the customs issues you need to do the following but only if you are holding stock yourself.

Shipping from the EU, with goods stored in the EU requires one to be VAT registered in the country your goods will be stored in. So for example if you are going to use a 3pl or open your warehouse in say France, you will need to be VAT registered in France. Then if you are going to sell in other EU countries, not just France then you also have to register for OSS so you can collect the taxes on your online store checkout.

Then each month you will need to provide the necessary sales information to the company that will be handling your VAT returns and OSS submissions and pay the taxes you have collected from each countries sales. Remember VAT rates are different in each EU country so you really want a web platform that can handle that or open an individual store aimed for that specific country.

After looking through all of our options we opted for FRANCE, as it didn't require fiscal representation, it seemed like the quickest time to get our registrations in place and it was the closest to the UK so sending our goods from here to there would be "cheaper and quicker".

We are now able to send our goods to the whole of EU much faster than we ever could from the UK, we can ship to Ireland and other EU countries in 1 day and overall our customers are much happier.

I hope this information helps