quick remainder to all EU residents.... 1 July new €3 customs duty per item

[nctnico]

My guess (fear) here in DK is that :

1: They (Post DK) will 100% stop all packages (primarily because of #3 below).
2: They will 100% max out on all taxes, aka. 3€ per different item.

3: The scary part -
    They will (are allowed) to add a $23 fee for handling the duty processing, and i even think they are allowed to do that per item line.

So unless China are comming up with some way to prepay the duty , or ship from within EU.
They will prob. succeed in stopping 60..80% of my Ali buys.

For what I have understood of the new tax is that the likes of Aliexpress have to charge their customers this additional tax and fork it over just like is done with the VAT. Only in the case that this has not been done, will the postal service charge you the TAX plus some administrative fee.

My expectation is that Aliexpress will come up with some system that avoids these additional taxes by using European warehouses to ship from, and maybe give you a choice of stuff from China but then with the added 3 euro per unique HS code. Or you just won't see items that have to come directly from China anymore. Like what has been happening for some time now.

Indeed. Aliexpress is big enough to do their own customs handling end-to-end if they want. So even if you order something from China, Aliexpress will ship it to the EU as part of a bulk business to business shipment and seperate the bulk shipment into individual packages in an EU warehouse.

[tszaboo]

Counterfeit is an amount issue, but economically not a counterfeiter issue, import is economically not an importer issue either.
But both are entity issues for those who control them.

Big importer is much more controllable.

Here from post,
first class domestic stamp (50 g) is now 3€.
Small (11x32x42 cm, 25 kg) domestic parcel is ~10€.
5 pcs of C5 easy-envelopes (500 g, 3 cm thick, only envelope part includes VAT) are 22.20€.

Somebody must pay the postman.

The issue is with the international postage agreements.
As per current agreements, the only country getting paid for the post is the sender's country. The destination gets nothing.
The agreement was made when there was some mail going both ways, and the amount of mail was about the same. Today, nobody sends domestic mail, and I guess 50% of what the local post does is delivering foreign packages, that they are no getting paid to do.

To compound the problem, some governments thinks that a utility, like a postal service, should be run as a for-profit organization. So the post does what they can, increase the prices of the packages and mail coming from here. I can order something from China, and it's cheaper, than me sending a post card to my neighbor.
Bad for local business, bad for the economy, and it doesn't matter if you don't order anything. Because others will.

[wraper]

The issue is with the international postage agreements.
As per current agreements, the only country getting paid for the post is the sender's country. The destination gets nothing.
The agreement was made when there was some mail going both ways, and the amount of mail was about the same. Today, nobody sends domestic mail, and I guess 50% of what the local post does is delivering foreign packages, that they are no getting paid to do.

IIRC it has changed quite a while ago. Also it's certainly not an issue in Latvia. Most of the Temu and Aliexpress parcels do not even get delivered by Latvia post but are delivered to Omniva and Unisend parcel machines instead. Even when delivered by Latvia post, it seems they get here by other means and then are shipped out locally from a capital's neighboring town where virtually all logistics companies are located.

[SiliconWizard]

Aliexpress uses various services for shipping and for the "last mile" delivery. Most of them are private. They use local postal services less and less often. That mostly depends on where the item was shipped from before entering the destination country. Keep in mind that they now have a lot of warehouses in Europe and so, in many cases, you get them from an european country anyway.

In the past year for instance, I only received packages from Aliex via local post once. The rest were all private services.

[Cyclotron]

All of my Aliexpress has ever been by unheard of carriers here in the US. Someone shows up in a car and throws the package at the door. It's hilarious to watch them throw the package, take a photo and jump back in the car. I think, some day they'll be fast enough to photo it while its still in the air.

[ftg]

Here around 90% of my Aliexpress parcels have been via the local Post Office.

[rf-messkopf]

As far as I know, this flat €3 customs duty per product category (HS tariff code) for all orders under €150 is only a temporary rule until a digital customs platform (the so-called EU Data Hub) launches in 2028.

From then on the €3 flat fee will disappear and customs duties will be calculated percentage-based for every item using EU Data Hub. Since electronic components are generally duty-free, no customs duties will apply to them from 2028 onwards. IIRC there will however be a flat handling fee of €2 for shipments under €150.

Originally, the elimination of the €150 duty-free limit was planned to launch alongside the EU Data Hub in 2028. However, some member states were getting impatient with the massive flood of cheap packages and threatened to enforce their own national import taxes. To prevent a fragmented tax chaos, the EU rushed this messy €3 intermediate compromise forward.

So there is hope that things will get better again.

[Cyclotron]

As far as I know, this flat €3 customs duty per product category (HS tariff code) for all orders under €150 is only a temporary rule until a digital customs platform (the so-called EU Data Hub) launches in 2028.

From then on the €3 flat fee will disappear and customs duties will be calculated percentage-based for every item using EU Data Hub. Since electronic components are generally duty-free, no customs duties will apply to them from 2028 onwards. IIRC there will however be a flat handling fee of €2 for shipments under €150.

Originally, the elimination of the €150 duty-free limit was planned to launch alongside the EU Data Hub in 2028. However, some member states were getting impatient with the massive flood of cheap packages and threatened to enforce their own national import taxes. To prevent a fragmented tax chaos, the EU rushed this messy €3 intermediate compromise forward.

So there is hope that things will get better again.

I am often said to be "jaded" by my friends. Life made me that way.

I find it hard to believe that a government collecting taxes today will stop doing so later under anything but near armed rebellion. That might be the "American" in me. But I can totally them later saying, oh, we decided this €3 is just the base now and we collect a percentage on top of that except for some things. I guess we have a couple years to wait and find out.

[tszaboo]

As far as I know, this flat €3 customs duty per product category (HS tariff code) for all orders under €150 is only a temporary rule until a digital customs platform (the so-called EU Data Hub) launches in 2028.

From then on the €3 flat fee will disappear and customs duties will be calculated percentage-based for every item using EU Data Hub. Since electronic components are generally duty-free, no customs duties will apply to them from 2028 onwards. IIRC there will however be a flat handling fee of €2 for shipments under €150.

Originally, the elimination of the €150 duty-free limit was planned to launch alongside the EU Data Hub in 2028. However, some member states were getting impatient with the massive flood of cheap packages and threatened to enforce their own national import taxes. To prevent a fragmented tax chaos, the EU rushed this messy €3 intermediate compromise forward.

So there is hope that things will get better again.

I am often said to be "jaded" by my friends. Life made me that way.

I find it hard to believe that a government collecting taxes today will stop doing so later under anything but near armed rebellion. That might be the "American" in me. But I can totally them later saying, oh, we decided this €3 is just the base now and we collect a percentage on top of that except for some things. I guess we have a couple years to wait and find out.

We have the largest tax burden since forever, and we are not even at war with anyone.
It's sickening, governments need to find a way to reduce spending.
I earn some money. The company has additional 20-30% social security on this. Then I need to pay 30-50% as income tax, and then 20% as value added tax when spending it. If i need to hire someone to ie fix my washing machine, I need to earn 8 times as much as the money they end up with, because at that point the money was taxed to the total amount of about 85%. It's an endless money pit.

[rf-messkopf]

I find it hard to believe that a government collecting taxes today will stop doing so later under anything but near armed rebellion.

In any case, that is the current regulatory stance. The precise percentage-based customs duty, applied without the €150 de minimis threshold, is part of a broader customs reform that includes the creation of a dedicated EU customs authority and the aforementioned EU Customs Data Hub.

It seems legally impossible to me that a combination of the €3 flat fee and a percentage-based duty would eventually be adopted for the same item. I am no expert, but that would almost certainly violate WTO rules under the GATT agreements. After all, both levies share the same legal nature as import duties. You cannot simply levy them multiple times in different ways on the same goods (unless you completely throw international agreements out of the window, like some governments do). The flat fee is a temporary substitute for the regular duty because the infrastructure required to precisely assess duties on the massive volume of cheap shipments from the Far East is not yet in place, and some EU countries were impatient.

This wretched €3 flat fee per product category already appears to rest on shaky legal ground. It exceeds agreed GATT tariff ceilings, places a disproportionate burden on very low-value items, and could be viewed as an unjustified, disguised, and generalized protective tariff. As a temporary measure, the EU seems to be deliberately exploiting the extremely long timeframes for filing WTO complaints, should China, for instance, decide to pursue that course of action.

Anyway, I am not here to discuss legal matters, which I understand even less than electronics. I just wanted to post this for general information. Let's hope that things will change for the better.

[MT]

Fuck Ursula, and then fuck her again.

You dont want to fuck that nasty piece of war mongering WEF garbage....if you do you will get brown nazi shite on your peepee.

[Cyclotron]

I find it hard to believe that a government collecting taxes today will stop doing so later under anything but near armed rebellion.

In any case, that is the current regulatory stance. The precise percentage-based customs duty, applied without the €150 de minimis threshold, is part of a broader customs reform that includes the creation of a dedicated EU customs authority and the aforementioned EU Customs Data Hub.

It seems legally impossible to me that a combination of the €3 flat fee and a percentage-based duty would eventually be adopted for the same item. I am no expert, but that would almost certainly violate WTO rules under the GATT agreements. After all, both levies share the same legal nature as import duties. You cannot simply levy them multiple times in different ways on the same goods (unless you completely throw international agreements out of the window, like some governments do). The flat fee is a temporary substitute for the regular duty because the infrastructure required to precisely assess duties on the massive volume of cheap shipments from the Far East is not yet in place, and some EU countries were impatient.

This wretched €3 flat fee per product category already appears to rest on shaky legal ground. It exceeds agreed GATT tariff ceilings, places a disproportionate burden on very low-value items, and could be viewed as an unjustified, disguised, and generalized protective tariff. As a temporary measure, the EU seems to be deliberately exploiting the extremely long timeframes for filing WTO complaints, should China, for instance, decide to pursue that course of action.

Anyway, I am not here to discuss legal matters, which I understand even less than electronics. I just wanted to post this for general information. Let's hope that things will change for the better.

@rf-messkopf, I appreciate that you presented the knowledge. I apologize if my comment seemed like an affront to you; that wasn't my intention. It's my nature to assume that companies and governments will never do "the right" thing unless forced to. And it has been my experience that temporary taxes are never temporary.

I hope that I'm wrong about these things, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

[rf-messkopf]

@rf-messkopf, I appreciate that you presented the knowledge. I apologize if my comment seemed like an affront to you; that wasn't my intention. It's my nature to assume that companies and governments will never do "the right" thing unless forced to. And it has been my experience that temporary taxes are never temporary.

I hope that I'm wrong about these things, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I didn't feel attacked, apologies if it came across that way. And I agree that one should remain sceptical when it comes to politics.

[hazzer]

19th June and looks like AliExress is already collecting the additional duty charge.....
I assume in anticipation of the goods arriving into the EU after 1st July.....
the new "VAT" is on the final cost including the new 3 euro duty.....

to explain, the 18.20usd had the old EU vat included ... I wouldn't fancy the job of maintaining the checkout software...

[hazzer]

Ah for god sake...... whats happening in November 26th?

[pcprogrammer]

Lucky me then. I placed an order on the 18th and no additional charge was added. I just checked with a basket going to checkout and it does not show this additional duty either. Did not go through to pay, because I already bought this kind of stuff yesterday.   

The destination of what I buy on Aliexpress is France, because that is where I live.

Placed an order at JLCPCB this morning and they did not charge the extra 3 euros either.

[themadhippy]

Ah for god sake...... whats happening in November 26th?

start of the posties crismaz bonus fund?

[bte]

Ah for god sake...... whats happening in November 26th?

I know this thread is about EU and nobody here cares about what happens here. I just want to write what has happened here over the years to provide perspective (into what might happen in EU over time as well):

    Before 2016: Tax-free limit is 150 EUR. Personal purchase up to 1500 EUR possible by paying import tax. Above 1500 EUR required import procedures.
    2016: 150 EUR was reduced to 30 EUR.
    2018: 30 EUR was reduced to 22 EUR.
    2019: Tax-free limit abolished. Still possible to make personal purchases up to 1500 EUR by paying import tax.
    2022: 1500 EUR personal limit was reduced to 150 EUR.
    2024: 150 EUR personal limit was reduced to 30 EUR.
    later in 2024: 30 EUR now includes shipping cost (until now it was item value only).
    even later: Any package that came as "free shipping" was assumed to have a shipping cost of 3 EUR, effectively reducing the personal allowance to 27 EUR.
    April 1, 2025: It is no longer possible to buy from abroad unless the seller has a local representative or branch.
    Jan 2026: Personal purchases no longer allowed. All imports are considered commercial, so one needs to use the mandatory service of an approved customs broker who will open a file on your behalf and do the paperwork with the ministry of commerce. The cost starts at around $300 per package. Just to make clear, this is processing cost only, one still needs to pay tax and any other certification fees if applicable (i.e. trying to buy an oscilloscope would trigger the "let's check if this item complies with our standards" line item, which would probably cost more than the item itself).

All done in the name of "protecting the local industry" but nobody can openly question the fact that for most items purchased, there's no local industry, only importers (who import and sell for 10x the price compared to what you would pay if one could pay the tax and purchase it).

So, Nov 2026 may be another step in boiling the frog slowly.