well, duty is jut a form of taxation, we pay many taxes for many reasons. Nobody likes paying taxes but we all enjoy the services that are paid with taxation (some of us , the civil servants, ow their salaries to taxation) and if you stop for a moment and think how much those services cost, you will see that most of us don’t get a bad deal out of it. Some get a worse deal because they earn a lot of money and some get a better deal because they earn less.
We all know that if we need a trauma helicopter because of a car crash we will get one and that the whole operation won’t cost you a penny, although it costs a fortune to run it in general and in particular for the accident that might involve you. The same goes for countless other things that we take for granted and that are not free although they cost us little or nothing.
I don’t like paying taxes, like anybody else, however my father used to say that if you do pay income tax you have done well and made money, if you don’t you have done very badly.
First of all the largest chunk of tax you pay is the Value Added tax or VAT. That tax you pay on everything you buy or sell and it amounts to a sales tax.
It is by far the largest amount of tax that any of us pays in Europe (it varies quite a bit because is not a tax levied by Europe but it is levied from each national government) and it is a tax that one pays on anything that we buy and is not progressive so, 21% tax on a saxophone is 21% of is cost regardless whether you, the buyer are rich or poor.
Some items are taxed at a very low tariff (because we all need them like some basic food items or because especially the less rich need them or because the country wants to support their use, like books or theatre tickets ) some, like luxury cars or jewels or fur coats. are taxed at a higher tariff.
Anyway, if you run a company, you don’t pay VAT tax when importing but you will charge it if you sell this item.
Incidentally, in the UK, strangely enough, you pay VAT also when you as a private person sell an item at an auction (but not on ebay) and VAT is paid both from the person selling that the person buying.
The import tax is paid only if you buy something outside the EU.
If you buy an item from the EU you do pay (if the item is new) VAT to the vendor of the country where the goods come from, he will pay the VAT to his state. You don’t pay VAT for secondhand items if sold by a private seller, you do if they are sold via a shop which sells second hand.
Import tax is levied from certain countries outside of the EU and applies different percentages depending on the type of goods.
Often is a rather low percentage, and some countries don’t have a tax if the item is in parts or is secondhand.
It is worth investigating this particular thing if you import either.
