Brexit  News

As of 1st January 2021, the UK has left the Brexit transition period which has applied during most of 2020.

A UK/EU trade deal has been finalized, but only over the last few days of 2020 and details of the deal are still coming to light. The changes to the UK / EU border arrangements will be quite sharp and sudden.  For sending goods, there will be extra work and complications required for transport paperwork. There may also be delays at the UK borders, depending on how tightly the new customs arrangements are enforced on the EU side.  For these reasons, we plan to phase in our EU despatches only gradually during January and will not send out any EU parcels during the first few days. We want to avoid consignments being stuck in transit due to delayed lorries or due to customs clearance problems with our own paperwork. When we make our first despatches, they will start only gradually while we learn and become more sure of the process. There is a steep learning curve.

We do apologize for the inconvenience this may cause.

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As a result of the new trading relationship, the goods we send to our EU customers from now on will need to be customs cleared into the EU.  It means that you the customer will now be responsible to pay your local VAT and import taxes on the goods we send in your own home country.

Will this cost me more?

Yes. But to give more detail:

If you are an EU private individual or business without a VAT number, in the past we added 20% UK VAT to your invoice. In future we will not add this 20% VAT.  Instead you need to pay your own country’s VAT rate on the goods directly to the courier.

If you are an EU business and we have invoiced  you without added VAT in the past because you are registered for VAT in your home country, you will now need to pay your local country VAT to the courier before delivery, and then claim it back on your VAT tax return.

We recommend that you check the guidance given by your local country government for dealing with UK imports. It may be possible for businesses to arrange to delay paying the import VAT / import tax for a period, but any arrangements will vary from country to country and we can’t advise on the process.

However, for all EU customers, there will likely be additional import taxes to pay at the time of import,  depending on the items in your delivery. Typically this should be around 4.7% of the goods value on bicycle frame parts. This rate may be higher for bicycle parts manufactured in some countries. For example for the USA, there are new import tax rates that apply from November 2020 of nearly 30% for bicycle frame parts made there. These are EU import taxes that are added based on the country of manufacture of the parts, regardless of the fact they are coming from us in the UK.  If the goods are exclusively EU or UK made parts, then these may be covered by the new free trade deal finalized at the end of 2020. However the 'rules of origin' to qualify for the trade deal are very complex and difficult to implement, and we cannot confirm for certain at this time, whether the zero percentage charge for EU/UK sourced parts will apply on our supplies or not. We will know later. If not, then a rate of 4.7% will likely apply to EU/UK made parts as well.

Finally, the courier will add a small fee (DHL’s is around £12) for collecting these taxes prior to delivery.

The courier will email or text you automatically with details of the charges and methods for payment.  They will deliver the goods to you after receipt of payment. If the charges are not paid, the courier will eventually return the goods back to us.