Author Topic: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire  (Read 5093 times)

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Offline soldarTopic starter

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #25 on: October 21, 2023, 01:42:12 pm »
The seller has the opportunity to inspect the goods and should know the law in the country they're exporting to.
That is not how the real world works. If you are buying in China you are doing the transaction under Chinese laws and legal system. The seller is only bound by those and nothing else.

And the same with the other way around. A seller in Europe has no obligation to know the law of the country he is exporting to. Someone buys from him and it is the buyer's responsibility to comply with the laws of the country he is taking it to.

Imagine a European seller who ships a movie, work of literature, wine or food, etc to a country where the item is prohibited. Suppose a court in Booniestan declares the European seller to have broken their laws and imposes a fine. No European country would submit to that and with good reason. It would make trade impossible. And I cannot help but detect a a tone of ethno-superiority in those who say other countries should submit to our rules, presumably because our rules are better, when we would never consider submitting to their rules.

The seller is required to comply with the laws of his own jurisdiction and the importer from another country is required to comply with the laws and regulations of their own jurisdiction. That is the way it is and that is the way it should be. Anything else is just unworkable.

And, from a legal standpoint it does not matter if I bring something with me or if I have it shipped to me. One way or another I am the one who caused the forbidden stuff to move into the forbidden jurisdiction.

A French cheese merchant, a Spanish wine merchant, A Belgian beer seller, etc. only need to comply with the laws of their jurisdiction and they need not know nor care that their product is not legal in some other place.

Buyer buys a product abroad and and when the product gets to customs it is confiscated and destroyed before it enters the country. It is all on the buyer and nothing on the seller.

If there is misrepresentation in the sale then the seller's jurisdiction has jurisdiction unless otherwise agreed. But that is a different matter.
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Offline switchabl

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #26 on: October 21, 2023, 02:48:36 pm »
And, from a legal standpoint it does not matter if I bring something with me or if I have it shipped to me.

I'm sorry, but this is simply wrong. In fact the Blue Guide I linked above points this out explicitly:
Quote
Placing on the market is considered not to take place where a product is:
[...]
— bought by a consumer in a third country while physically present in that country (50) and brought by the consumer into the EU for the personal use of that person

On the other hand:
Quote
— Some products outside the EU can be bought directly by end-users in the EU online or through other means of distance sales. Although these products are deemed to be made available in the Union prior to any transaction for the purposes of checks by market surveillance authorities pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, they are placed on the market at the moment an order by an end user has been placed and confirmed for a specific product already manufactured and
subject of the transaction, and ready to be shipped.

If you sell directly to consumers in a third country, it is not at all uncommon for those countries to expect you to follow their regulations. They may even require you to collect VAT for them. Now, if you don't have any representative or assets there, you might choose not to do that and they may never be able to fully enforce that. But they can have your products confiscated by customs and have your listings removed from e-commerce platforms. And if things go pear-shaped, you might want to choose your future holiday locations around extradition treaties.

And the real problem is not people deliberately buying from shady third-country sellers. The problem is those sellers offering their dangerous products on legitimate marketplaces next to legitimate products, or through their own, seemingly legitimate, localised web shops. It is often not clear at first (or even second) sight where those products come from. If they ship through a local fulfilment service, you may never notice. And even if you can eventually spot the difference, can your elderly relatives?
 

Offline AVGresponding

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #27 on: October 21, 2023, 04:00:34 pm »
I'd argue that the larger part of the problem is that the majority of the people buying this crap have zero knowledge of electrical standards, safety etc, and just operate on the premise "cheaper is better", and assume that anything sold via a "reputable" platform like eBay or Amazon must be safe. Unless you educate these people, any other action you take will be doomed to failure.
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Offline MLi

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #28 on: October 21, 2023, 05:37:12 pm »
If you're going to make that argument then why not just abolish all health and safety laws? It's a straw man. The seller should take the lion's share of the responsibility.
You're acting like that isn't the default opinion on this forum.  :-DD
 

Offline AndyBeez

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #29 on: October 21, 2023, 05:48:36 pm »
I'd argue that the larger part of the problem is that the majority of the people buying this crap have zero knowledge of electrical standards, safety etc, and just operate on the premise "cheaper is better", and assume that anything sold via a "reputable" platform like eBay or Amazon must be safe. Unless you educate these people, any other action you take will be doomed to failure.
Agreed 100%

Sadly the majority of people includes project managers, product/brand directors, purchasing executives, senior executives and the wunder kinders in accounts. Now go design stuff.
 

Offline magic

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #30 on: October 21, 2023, 05:55:21 pm »
And the real problem is not people deliberately buying from shady third-country sellers. The problem is those sellers offering their dangerous products on legitimate marketplaces next to legitimate products, or through their own, seemingly legitimate, localised web shops.
The real problem is the one you have any degree of control over, and that happens to be your local citizens. So you can stop them from buying garbage by inspecting their incoming post, you can order test samples of items offered to them and attempt to restrict access to unsuitable offers from your territory, and you can punish those bypassing your regulations.

If you sell directly to consumers in a third country, it is not at all uncommon for those countries to expect you to follow their regulations. They may even require you to collect VAT for them.
And which country would require foreign vendors to do its tax collection?

Even the EUSSR isn't so full of shit, and only offers it as an option, and only under a threat of making the customers pay unreasonable processing fees, not the sellers themselves.
 

Offline themadhippy

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #31 on: October 21, 2023, 06:07:09 pm »
Quote
And which country would require foreign vendors to do its tax collection?
The uk post brexit for one
 
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Offline soldarTopic starter

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #32 on: October 21, 2023, 08:18:52 pm »
Quote
And which country would require foreign vendors to do its tax collection?
The uk post brexit for one
Um, no. That's not right. The UK can require corporations which work in the UK to collect taxes from UK buyers. It absolutely cannot require foreign vendors to do anything at all. The foreign vendor is not collecting tax for the UK. Amazon, operating in the UK, is collecting tax for the UK from buyers in the UK. The foreign vendor has nothing to do with these taxes.

The UK does it just like other countries do it. It's not like they've invented anything.
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Offline switchabl

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #33 on: October 21, 2023, 09:15:55 pm »
You keep making these bold, easily refuted statements.  :-//

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-and-overseas-goods-sold-directly-to-customers-in-the-uk
Quote
Goods that are outside the UK at the point of sale
[...]
Consignments valued at £135 or less
[...]
The seller must charge and account for VAT at the point of sale, unless the consignment is a business to business sale and the customer has given them their UK VAT registration number.
(And yes, the VAT registration form has a box you can check specifically if you are not based in the UK).

I'm not saying that this is a particularly brilliant arrangement. And if you are a small business in China you might just get away with ignoring it and maybe sell under a new alias in case you get blacklisted or something. A reputable company (whether EU or China) that cares about its UK customer base may not want to risk that...
« Last Edit: October 21, 2023, 09:19:01 pm by switchabl »
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #34 on: October 21, 2023, 09:42:40 pm »
It is not like the cable is intrinsically bad. It is perfectly good for other applications but not for putting 5A through it to power a toaster.
Those cables are intrinsically bad. The steel can only tolerate a limited amount of flexing, then it fractures, arcs, and bad things happen. I've encountered them before, not so much as a fire hazard, but as an unreliable piece of junk. Perhaps copper coated steel has applications in fixed wiring setups, but as a flex its useless.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #35 on: October 21, 2023, 09:44:38 pm »
Quote
And which country would require foreign vendors to do its tax collection?
The uk post brexit for one
Um, no. That's not right. The UK can require corporations which work in the UK to collect taxes from UK buyers. It absolutely cannot require foreign vendors to do anything at all. The foreign vendor is not collecting tax for the UK. Amazon, operating in the UK, is collecting tax for the UK from buyers in the UK. The foreign vendor has nothing to do with these taxes.

The UK does it just like other countries do it. It's not like they've invented anything.
Since a few months ago, if you buy anything on AliExpress from the UK they add UK VAT to the price, and state this is an agreement they have with the UK government.
 

Offline soldarTopic starter

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #36 on: October 21, 2023, 10:57:08 pm »
Since a few months ago, if you buy anything on AliExpress from the UK they add UK VAT to the price, and state this is an agreement they have with the UK government.
Aliexpress is a doing business in the UK and the UK government requires them to collect taxes from UK buyers.  If a UK buyer is buying a widget through aliexpress (or ebay or amazon, etc) from a seller in China, the seller collects no tax and does not care about the tax. He can be selling to twenty different countries through the platform and it is the platform who is collecting the tax from the buyer and passes it to the buyer's government.  There is no collection of taxes in origin, it is all in destination. Aliexpress in the UK collects tax money from the buyer in the UK and passes it on to the british Government. The tax is never collected in China, it is not paid by the seller. It is paid by the buyer in the UK to the Government of the UK. The seller who sells through Aliexpress neither knows nor cares about this. He is selling to twenty different countries and does not care what the buyers need to pay. That is what the platform does.

In the USA each state has a different tax and the platforms collect from the buyer and pay the State. The seller in China is not concerned with this in the least. He gets exactly the same price and later the platform adds the tax and charges the buyer.

Anyone who thinks all those small sellers in China are collecting taxes for hundreds of different jurisdictions all over the world is very misinformed. Those small sellers do not even have the capacity to do that. It would be crazy to think they are submitting to each American state and to each country in the world collected taxes which may amount to cents only. That is precisely what the platforms do.
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Offline coppice

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #37 on: October 21, 2023, 11:04:23 pm »
Since a few months ago, if you buy anything on AliExpress from the UK they add UK VAT to the price, and state this is an agreement they have with the UK government.
Aliexpress is a doing business in the UK and the UK government requires them to collect taxes from UK buyers.  If a UK buyer is buying a widget through aliexpress (or ebay or amazon, etc) from a seller in China, the seller collects no tax and does not care about the tax. He can be selling to twenty different countries through the platform and it is the platform who is collecting the tax from the buyer and passes it to the buyer's government.  There is no collection of taxes in origin, it is all in destination. Aliexpress in the UK collects tax money from the buyer in the UK and passes it on to the british Government. The tax is never collected in China, it is not paid by the seller. It is paid by the buyer in the UK to the Government of the UK. The seller who sells through Aliexpress neither knows nor cares about this. He is selling to twenty different countries and does not care what the buyers need to pay. That is what the platform does.

In the USA each state has a different tax and the platforms collect from the buyer and pay the State. The seller in China is not concerned with this in the least. He gets exactly the same price and later the platform adds the tax and charges the buyer.

Anyone who thinks all those small sellers in China are collecting taxes for hundreds of different jurisdictions all over the world is very misinformed. Those small sellers do not even have the capacity to do that. It would be crazy to think they are submitting to each American state and to each country in the world collected taxes which may amount to cents only. That is precisely what the platforms do.
AliExpress has no operations in the UK. If I want to buy from a shop on AliExpress I am buying from the Chinese AliExpress company in China, and they handle charging me, and often delivery, on behalf of the small local traders they represent.
 

Offline soldarTopic starter

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #38 on: October 22, 2023, 07:14:06 am »
AliExpress has no operations in the UK. If I want to buy from a shop on AliExpress I am buying from the Chinese AliExpress company in China, and they handle charging me, and often delivery, on behalf of the small local traders they represent.
Aliexpress has offices and bank accounts in UK and can be sued in the UK. Same as eBay and Amazon.
Quote
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06030390
ALIEXPRESS LIMITED
Company number 06030390
Registered office address
Flat B, 13 Dawes Road, London, England, SW6 7DT
And I do not know if they have brick and mortar stores in UK which they do in EUland.

At any rate, at the volumes those platforms operate it becomes necessary for them to use their own containers, sorting, delivery, etc. so it is unavoidable for them to operate in the destination country if there is any significant volume.

When I have bought anything from China through those big platforms I do not remember ever having received the item posted from China. They have operations where they ship entire containers and then mail from there because it is much cheaper, faster and efficient that way.

As far as the physical package is concerned my government doesn't even know it originates in China.
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Offline soldarTopic starter

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #39 on: October 22, 2023, 10:22:15 am »
The way I understand it, in very general terms, is as follows.

The laws on VAT or sales tax burden the buyer always. The taxable subject is the buyer.

The laws place a duty on some sellers subject to the jurisdiction of those laws to collect the taxes and pass them on to the government. They cannot and do not place such obligation on sellers outside their jurisdiction.

It is false that a buyer would pay the tax, and send the money, to a foreign seller, out of jurisdiction, who would then turn around and send it back to the buyer's jurisdiction. It makes no sense. The money would be converted to a foreign currency and then back again. The seller could just not send it back. The scheme makes no sense in any sense.

Imported goods are supposed to pay duties and taxes at the moment of import, when they become subject to the jurisdiction of the law.

Governments have customs and border controls just for this purpose.

But governments realize it is foolhardy to try to inspect and collect millions of small, low value, packages and they have twisted the arms of the big platforms to collect the taxes for them. Which makes sense.

But if I buy outside of these big platforms from some outfit in China there is no way they would collect any VAT or sales tax and remit it to any western government. They simply cannot do it. I, as the buyer, am responsible for paying VAT and duty when the goods arrive in my jurisdiction. And that is the way it was before the platforms had any agreement to collect taxes. No European tax money went to China, ever.
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Offline Ranayna

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #40 on: October 22, 2023, 02:51:22 pm »
It is false that a buyer would pay the tax, and send the money, to a foreign seller, out of jurisdiction, who would then turn around and send it back to the buyer's jurisdiction. It makes no sense. The money would be converted to a foreign currency and then back again. The seller could just not send it back. The scheme makes no sense in any sense.
[...]
But if I buy outside of these big platforms from some outfit in China there is no way they would collect any VAT or sales tax and remit it to any western government. They simply cannot do it. I, as the buyer, am responsible for paying VAT and duty when the goods arrive in my jurisdiction. And that is the way it was before the platforms had any agreement to collect taxes. No European tax money went to China, ever.
But that *is* the way it is now supposed to work, and *does* work with various sellers.
I picked something random on Banggood.com:
1908093-0
Note the notice: "Inclusive of VAT", the shipping location from China, and the expected delivery date, which matches delivery directly from china.
The VAT notice has a help link:
https://www.banggood.com/index.php?com=help&t=questionCategory&artid=1901&catid=187
And this page describes exactly what @soldar explains. I was not able to find a german address of Banggood, so i am resonably sure that they do not have one.

By the way, that process of getting foreign companies to collect VAT on behalf of the customer was started way before Brexit. I would think that the UK only does that because it's an old EU ruling that was not yet abolished.



 
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Offline mendip_discovery

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #41 on: October 22, 2023, 03:36:56 pm »
By the way, that process of getting foreign companies to collect VAT on behalf of the customer was started way before Brexit. I would think that the UK only does that because it's an old EU ruling that was not yet abolished.

I am sure I have read that is exactly what the EU have done, it was a planned thing to happen at about the same time as the UK plan. This way the tax offices' get more money and dont have to rely on import paperwork to be honest on the values.
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Offline soldarTopic starter

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #42 on: October 22, 2023, 03:47:34 pm »
But that *is* the way it is now supposed to work, and *does* work with various sellers.
I picked something random on Banggood.com:

And this page describes exactly what @soldar explains. I was not able to find a german address of Banggood, so i am resonably sure that they do not have one.
The fact that it appears to the customer that the tax money is being sent to China and back does not mean that is what is actually happening.

Those pages you link to do not support your point in any way, shape or form.

We would have to see the actual details of an actual transaction. In any case. I found Banggood has a representative office in Cyprus. So they do have a presence in the EU. And they probably have much more than that as far as shipping, etc.

I am now retired but have spent most of my professional life in purchasing and these things can get quite convoluted. To give you an example, We sold in Spain, to the national phone company, products of an American company, made in China, delivered mostly in China (to be included in a pack),  other times in Spain, and we paid to the American company in a bank in Singapore. I was in the middle of these contracts and negotiations and even for me it was complicated and we had tax consultants and accountants involved.

The notion that tax money would leave the country and return is just, to me, completely preposterous. I have not seen anything halfway convincing so far. Others can believe otherwise.

I think I am done with this issue.

« Last Edit: October 22, 2023, 03:50:11 pm by soldar »
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Offline coppice

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #43 on: October 22, 2023, 04:38:23 pm »
By the way, that process of getting foreign companies to collect VAT on behalf of the customer was started way before Brexit. I would think that the UK only does that because it's an old EU ruling that was not yet abolished.

I am sure I have read that is exactly what the EU have done, it was a planned thing to happen at about the same time as the UK plan. This way the tax offices' get more money and dont have to rely on import paperwork to be honest on the values.
There was a huge increase in cooperation between a large pool of governments a few years ago over taxation, both company and personal. Governments that wouldn't trust each other over reports of today's weather seem to now be trusting each other to inform each other about the residency of people and the activities of companies.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #44 on: October 22, 2023, 04:45:36 pm »
AliExpress has no operations in the UK. If I want to buy from a shop on AliExpress I am buying from the Chinese AliExpress company in China, and they handle charging me, and often delivery, on behalf of the small local traders they represent.
Aliexpress has offices and bank accounts in UK and can be sued in the UK. Same as eBay and Amazon.
Quote
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06030390
ALIEXPRESS LIMITED
Company number 06030390
Registered office address
Flat B, 13 Dawes Road, London, England, SW6 7DT
And I do not know if they have brick and mortar stores in UK which they do in EUland.

At any rate, at the volumes those platforms operate it becomes necessary for them to use their own containers, sorting, delivery, etc. so it is unavoidable for them to operate in the destination country if there is any significant volume.

When I have bought anything from China through those big platforms I do not remember ever having received the item posted from China. They have operations where they ship entire containers and then mail from there because it is much cheaper, faster and efficient that way.

As far as the physical package is concerned my government doesn't even know it originates in China.
Try looking at any of the information about The UK registered Aliexpress company at the site you linked, https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06030390 . It seems to be just a shell company, with no apparent link to the Chinese Aliexpress, created in 2016 as an offshoot of another apparent shell company called Zaradneski. Its latest accounts show no activity in the past year.
 

Offline switchabl

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Re: Big Clive and Copper-Clad Wire
« Reply #45 on: October 22, 2023, 05:19:54 pm »
I am now retired but have spent most of my professional life in purchasing and these things can get quite convoluted. To give you an example, We sold in Spain, to the national phone company, products of an American company, made in China, delivered mostly in China (to be included in a pack),  other times in Spain, and we paid to the American company in a bank in Singapore. I was in the middle of these contracts and negotiations and even for me it was complicated and we had tax consultants and accountants involved.

I think this may explain at least part of your confusion. B2B is a whole different world than B2C and the latter has also changed a lot in the past decade or so. In B2B you have a lot of freedom in drafting your contracts. Once you start selling directly to consumers, countries tend to have pretty clear ideas on what you can or can not do. Just to give you an idea of what you can expect: https://www.s-ge.com/en/article/export-knowhow/20193-c3-e-commerce-legal-key-questions?ct

And yes, I get that they may not be able to enforce that in all cases. But that doesn't mean they think their rules don't apply to you and it doesn't mean that they are not going to try.

The notion that tax money would leave the country and return is just, to me, completely preposterous. I have not seen anything halfway convincing so far. Others can believe otherwise.

I have already posted a link to a UK government site explaining their VAT rules for cross-border e-commerce.

As others have mentioned, there is a EU version. It is called IOSS:
https://vat-one-stop-shop.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-07/vatecommerceexplanatory_notes_28102020_en.pdf
It's a bit different from the UK one in that it is not mandatory (but encouraged) outside of the big platforms. You may need an intermediary in the EU if your country doesn't have an agreement with the EU. And if you don't use it, the buyer still pays VAT on delivery. The UK approach seems to be "we trust you to do this" which still seems very weird to me. They may not have been prepared/have the resources to create a full replacement for the planned EU system post-Brexit.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2023, 05:25:26 pm by switchabl »
 
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