Author Topic: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers  (Read 39946 times)

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Offline bd139

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #200 on: December 28, 2020, 05:30:59 pm »
All Hermes drivers near me are professional drivers now in branded vehicles. They’re a long way from “miserable fucker slinging package over the fence” days. Was terrible back then I will admit.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #201 on: December 28, 2020, 05:35:21 pm »
well maybe it's better now in the UK but for other countries what does it mean? when you send with RM there is a default carrier the other end. I do not know how they are chosen but I suspect that if they had too many problems they might get changed. Hermes also make it their business to not be contactable which is a problem. Nothing says screw you to you customers than making it impossible to get in touch when something went wrong.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #202 on: December 28, 2020, 05:35:52 pm »
I'd use DPD if there was a local pickup point
 

Offline bd139

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #203 on: December 28, 2020, 05:37:47 pm »
RM are awful on contact too. I usually have to argue with them via Twitter firstly via shitposting and tagging them and then the panicked DMs to resolve the issue.

DPD are fairly good unless you need to go to the depot which for me is populated by Morlocks on crack.
 
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Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #204 on: December 28, 2020, 05:40:48 pm »
Yes RM are hard to contact too but not impossible, they are also regulated by offcom not that that means much but they don't go totally out on a limb and make it impossible to get hold of them and I actually got a reply to my emails recently and rather than tell me to sod off and fill in a form they asked for the tracking number for the parcel that had not arrived yet.
 
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Offline fcbTopic starter

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #205 on: December 28, 2020, 05:41:52 pm »
All Hermes drivers near me are professional drivers now in branded vehicles. They’re a long way from “miserable fucker slinging package over the fence” days. Was terrible back then I will admit.
Agree. Hermes used to be a joke. But this year we've had zero problems with them. Evidently they are evolving.

Yodel on the other hand  |O |O |O
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Offline fcbTopic starter

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #206 on: December 28, 2020, 05:42:41 pm »
DPD are fairly good unless you need to go to the depot which for me is populated by Morlocks on crack.
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Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #207 on: December 28, 2020, 05:44:40 pm »
All Hermes drivers near me are professional drivers now in branded vehicles. They’re a long way from “miserable fucker slinging package over the fence” days. Was terrible back then I will admit.
Agree. Hermes used to be a joke. But this year we've had zero problems with them. Evidently they are evolving.

Yodel on the other hand  |O |O |O

Yea it's yodel i had a problem with and had to pick it up from the ladies house, not really their fault, the idiots that chose to use them because they are cheap wanted their cake and to eat it and wanted me to sign for it and only me. But I am at work when the lady makes deliveries, so i don't buy from them anymore.
 

Offline bd139

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #208 on: December 28, 2020, 05:45:27 pm »
All Hermes drivers near me are professional drivers now in branded vehicles. They’re a long way from “miserable fucker slinging package over the fence” days. Was terrible back then I will admit.
Agree. Hermes used to be a joke. But this year we've had zero problems with them. Evidently they are evolving.

Yodel on the other hand  |O |O |O

Yodel are a big problem as well. Especially as they do a lot of the import cleared deliveries now. Most of the shit I order from China that won’t go through the letterbox is lobbed over my back fence by the bastards.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #209 on: December 28, 2020, 05:48:24 pm »
Hermes are DHL, so why don't they just do it as DHL?
 

Offline olkipukki

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #210 on: December 28, 2020, 05:53:47 pm »
For items that ship via UPS/DHL we could arrange to pay the duties and taxes, but finding out what those are from UPS/DHL (even with a commodity code/HTS number) is mysterious dark art for most destination countries.
In general, you will pay their admin fees on top, you can find these in tariff guide or speak to your account manager.

We mainly do non-DDP delivery from outside EU. Digikey/Mouser both handle all the VAT/excise duty, so technically they are DDP.
DK/Mouser are DDP by default. Mouser used to cleared via France for UK delivery (that's reason you probably never paid VAT on their orders), but very likely will change from 1st there.

Not sure about non-commercial delivery to EU countires. **
The major couriers (DHL/Fedex/UPS) have a fixed cost (never saw less than min 10 EUR admin fee) or % from a total amount. Assuming you're not their client, they usually send a post delivery invoice,  or ask advance payment at point of delivery or via invoice again, that's depends from a country.

** from non-EU country
« Last Edit: December 28, 2020, 06:03:08 pm by olkipukki »
 

Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #211 on: December 28, 2020, 05:59:26 pm »
Mouser have an EU base and even a UK office. So I assume they were handling the whole thing themselves and dealing with tax authorities. What happens if you are sending from your company in one country to you company in another country? All I know is that given how awful RS and Farnell are I actually chose to use Mouser a lot of the time if I can wait 2 more days, it's easier to get something from texas USA than it is from corby UK up the road from me or leeds UK.
 

Offline olkipukki

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #212 on: December 28, 2020, 06:13:30 pm »
Mouser have an EU base and even a UK office.
It doesn't matter, question how they have cleared non-EU import into EU.
Before, everything landed in France for UK, they have cleared customs and paid all taxes, and if you're VAT registered - no VAT since all done in France, right?

From 1st Jan, they're not going to do 'import into EU' for your UK delivery anymore.
There're still DDP, so you're okay - do not need to pay any admin fees or extra taxes, but will pay VAT to Mouser UK **

** regardless if VAT registered business or not


« Last Edit: December 28, 2020, 06:20:33 pm by olkipukki »
 

Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #213 on: December 28, 2020, 06:43:34 pm »
That's fine then, VAT registered companies will just reclaim the VAT like they usually do anyway.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #214 on: December 28, 2020, 06:49:52 pm »
That's fine then, VAT registered companies will just reclaim the VAT like they usually do anyway.
It takes a long time to reclaim that VAT, typing up considerable additional cash. Interest rates may be low, but this is still not a good situation.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #215 on: December 28, 2020, 06:56:20 pm »
That's fine then, VAT registered companies will just reclaim the VAT like they usually do anyway.
It takes a long time to reclaim that VAT, typing up considerable additional cash. Interest rates may be low, but this is still not a good situation.


Well if your cashflow relies on not paying VAT whilst you are charging it your clearly fucked as a business. As I explained a bit further back normally businesses pay VAT and charge VAT, each quarter the difference is paid to HMRC. So unless you are only buying and not selling you will have that money to hand anyway. Some companies run a separate account for VAT and will always put the VAT charged into that account and then use that account to pay the VAT on invoices so effectively every 3 months what is left in that account is given to HMRC as it would be the VAT on the markup.

You file every 3 months, the money is given taken in under a month. It's actually fairly automated, as I said, it's such a simple system and anything that at first glance looks silly actually gives the system it's simplicity, so you are not arguing about stuff with HMRC and having to show detailed accounts. You just give them the invoices for purchases and sales and get pay/get credited 16.6666% the residual value.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #216 on: December 30, 2020, 10:52:42 am »
There is in fact a simple way to at least try and solve it which is that the seller declares the correct value to the carrier and is responsible for doing so. It would not take that much enforcement work to catch the fraudsters and the sending countries authorities would have to agree to cooperate or their country is bared from using the easy system so it's all done the hard way which means only large importers would bother and importers don't pay the prices that consumers pay.

I just spent £97 with a Chinese company, all due credit to them, just days later fedex have knocked on my door with my goods and were paid $20 for their services. But the invoice has declared the total value at "14" so no idea if USD that I purchased in or GBP and apparently the shipping was free. Now I can't put that invoice against my accounts as I have £97 to justify (fortunately I am not VAT registered).

Who is responsible here? The only way of knowing is if I was to have my accounts inspected and the couriers records also be checked. If customs looked at the invoice in the package when it arrived and did a few minutes of research they could easily find out that the value is completely understated. I mean even if they just charged VAT that is nearly £20 that they would otherwise not have had and it could all be done in 15 minutes, £80/hr has got to be worth anyone's time even if they are paid £20/hr. If they charged me £2 for doing it I would not care. The same goods in the UK would have cost at least 5 times as much.

At one point and I see it is gone now PCB cart had a tick box option in the account settings for "correct value on invoice" which was code for, if you are a business maybe you would like us to be honest as it might cause you more pain than the money it saves.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #217 on: December 30, 2020, 10:56:15 am »
Amazon have just effectively done this. If I were VAT registered any sales made outside of the UK would have the VAT collected by Amazon and paid to the UK government directly completely removing me from the loop.
 

Offline fcbTopic starter

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #218 on: December 30, 2020, 11:34:15 am »
There is no such thing as 'free shipping' as far as customs are concerned.

If your chinese company declared '14' on the CI (COMMERCIAL INVOICE) then they are lying and depriving HMRC of legally entitled revenue.  These are the practices that they are trying to stamp out. And yes if customs spent a couple of minutes researching each parcel we'd have instant gridlock in the system.

Also, a CI is not the sort of invoice you can include in your accounts, it is purely a shipping document. Typically you should get or ask for a TAX INVOICE.

Going forward Simon, I would have thought it would make sense to be VAT registered even if you are below the threshold.  Accounting SW like Xero make VAT returns painless, and you can at least get an EORI which might help.
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Offline Simon

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #219 on: December 30, 2020, 04:11:56 pm »
No it's pointless being registered. Most of what I do is bulk buy and sell. So every sale would have to have an invoice that I would have to create. I would then have a lot more accounting to do no matter the system (I currently use Freeagent) because when you are VAT registered it's not about what is in your accounts but what the invoices say. So I sell an item on Amazon and ebay, I write and invoice for the buyer, but I get the money minus fees so I then have to track down every last document and have to start including money that I was never paid that has to come off the final value for: ebay, amazon (who would collect VAT for me apparently), paypal and stripe.

I'm not sure how all of this works in practice as now I go from just marking money arriving as a sale to a load of paperwork and then I need to get more paperwork to show that some of that money on the invoice never actually hit my accounts. So basically there would be the real money and then all of the invoices going both ways for everything. A lot of work, an awful lot, for what? to add 20% to my markup and give it to the government, or loose 16.66% off my markup and all the work.
 

Offline BravoV

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #220 on: January 02, 2021, 03:04:55 pm »
Ok, many Brits posters here, mostly with negative aura  :-\, as an outsider, what are/is the good points out of these ? The bright side only please.

There is no upside , quite frankly , the illusion of freedom is just that ,

Just now after reading below, I became fully understand whats you mean, 2021 will be pretty ugly, my sympathy.  :-[

-> Testing the UK elasticity limit in 2021

Offline SilverSolder

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #221 on: January 02, 2021, 03:42:45 pm »
Ok, many Brits posters here, mostly with negative aura  :-\, as an outsider, what are/is the good points out of these ? The bright side only please.

There is no upside , quite frankly , the illusion of freedom is just that ,

Just now after reading below, I became fully understand whats you mean, 2021 will be pretty ugly, my sympathy.  :-[

-> Testing the UK elasticity limit in 2021

The world is always changing...   we are living history!
 

Offline fcbTopic starter

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #222 on: January 02, 2021, 03:48:08 pm »
There's a good chance that if Scotland gets another 'once-in-a-generation' vote on independance soon they'll vote to leave the Union.

The actual name for the Tories is the "Conservative and Unionist Party", which tells you how much opposistion there will be to a vote in Northern Ireland on reuniting with Ireland (for those not familar with British politics the Unionist's want to remain in the United Kingdom and not 'reUNITE' with Ireland).

It's slippery and fairly inevitable slope we are on, and made even more likely by BREXIT.
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Offline fcbTopic starter

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #223 on: January 02, 2021, 03:49:18 pm »
These guys have nothing on what we are doing to ourselves in the UK.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2021, 03:51:58 pm by fcb »
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Offline BravoV

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Re: BREXIT - what it means for small manufacturers
« Reply #224 on: January 02, 2021, 04:41:26 pm »
It's slippery and fairly inevitable slope we are on, and made even more likely by BREXIT.

Yep, dark moment is coming, watch the video at the link I pointed above, where near at the end where the reporter Nick reported on what he got when interviewed a lady which has children crying on these issue, must be a lot of really stressful people there.  :'(


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