I'll not comment on other parts of the post but let's be honest. The importer of record (business or consumer) only paid extra duty on "undervalued" imports if they got "caught" (i.e. HMRC checked it at the border and charged the correct duty to release the item). How many posts have you seen on forums where people express surprise at having to pay extra duty? How many times does that not happen in comparison?
The problems with relying on the end user to effectively "check" the duty paid, is it simply does not work and duty is massively underpaid and always has been.
a) businesses won't pay extra unless they have to (keeps their costs down). I've personally dealt with businesses that bought in bulk from China and had a pretty good idea that the duty was probably underpaid due to goods being undervalued. Their only concern was making sure the paperwork tied up (if it doesnt, HMRC investigate further).
b) most individuals wouldnt likely know where to start - in theory all 67m people in the UK should check the duty on every single item they have purchased directly from outside the EU (for the last 48 years...), unless that's been dealt with through an import agent. And even then, you're relying on the import agent to check the duty amount is correct (which they are unlikely to spend time on, mostly they just deal with the paperwork).
I, personally, have no issues with the concept of paying more for goods in the context of paying the correct duty.
However, HMRC has very little chance of getting a company in, say, China, to pay extra duty, unless they just blanket hold all their goods at the border until it's been paid?
Last point, i agree with your comment that if the UK does raise more duty this way, bearing in mind every government is desperate to fill the giant hole in the public finances caused by "you know what" , it wouldnt be a surprise if the EU and others did the same at a later date.
As said at the start, this comment is only referencing the specific point on duty.
Indeed, good points. I didn't intend my post to be passing verdict on the change, rather noting the different considerations, and I didn't mean to sound quite as begrudging as "I suppose I ought to be glad that a loophole is being plugged" comes across after reading it again!
I haven't checked the rules for consignments over £135 value yet, where duty applies. Under that, it's just VAT we're talking about. So +20% from VAT, but at least -6% (£8 on £135) from not paying the "customs handling fee". (Above that, VAT is usually a much larger amount than duty for most goods).
Re b), yes, the situation where the consumer was the importer and responsible for the correctness of customs paperwork they had no part in completing was obviously not fit for today's world.
Rightly the money is owed, and payment has been commonly evaded. However, since that was the status quo it does represent a tax grab, and there's no quid pro quo here - with the removal of the LVCR (low value consignment relief, for <£15), quite the opposite! From a selfish consumer PoV I'd have liked to see that raised - for example I think USA and Aus both have thresholds around $200.
I can appreciate a secondary goal of keeping people's spending inside the UK. But there is a concern that UK retailers might try to take advantage by raising prices (which would be self-defeating, since this change will probably make it easier for us to order from abroad in the end, more predictable at least, once sellers have updated their systems).
Personally, most things I've 'imported' have been either things I couldn't find in the UK or things where the markup here was so crazy that paying the VAT etc would have still been worth it! From the USA generally things have had correct values marked and I've paid the due amounts (admittedly, did a lot more of that when we got two bucks for each quid!). From China, well... ahem, but still, it has to be a lot cheaper to make the weeks of waiting and lack of consumer protection worth it, or of relatively low value anyway.
Is that not the whole point of the sovereignty argument? That they now can?
For direct shipments UK always did have that option, AFAIK. What may have prevented it before now is the intermediate methods used, either shipping from EU warehouses (if they actually exist!) or bulk consignments shipped into the EU then split to individual shipments for UK consumers. No doubt plenty of evasion of taxes on that route; prices generally weren't much more than buying direct from China.
