Importing RC gear from the US
 

Hi!

I've moved to the UK from Austria, and I'm thinking about a comeback in RC.
In the past, I used to order RC gear from, eg, Stormer Hobbies as it was way cheaper than in Europe. However, I don't know what the duty rates for imports
to the UK are? VAT seems to be 17.5 %, right? Has anyone ordered from the US
recently and can he/she answer my question?

Thanks a lot.

Martin

this has come up in several threads in the past. if you search for "import" it should find you a few results.

it's not something that we actively encourage on here as we prefer to support our local shops to keep them in business!

get them to list them as scale model replica kits working or not working ull get em import duty free and right fully so as well but ull have to pay vat at 17.5 % still way cheaper than uk prices

most local shops have to order parts which i could do myself and i would normally have to pay tax. its a cruel world. In addition i pay track fees of 15 bucks when i go. also it is so much easier to arrive from work and see my box 'o' goods at my door. not to mention some hobby shops charge a arm and a leg for some things that are readily available on the internet.

no we dont
lol

In fairness to local hobby shops they do have overheads therefore have to jack up the prices, i.e staff wages, rent, electricity, water blah blah blah and to be honest seems much harder than i am sure it used to be.

The problem is that now the world is such a very very small place and shops cannot and/or have not been able to keep up with the market. Gone are the monopoly days where you could only get parts from your local shop exclusively. The birth of the internet was basically the death of the local business... They operate with little or no overheads, have a worldwide customer base of god knows how many billions of people and have a much bigger scope in terms of ordering capabilities...

A local shop just cant compete with that. What manufacturers should do if they are interested in local shops surviving, is to change warranties to restrict out of country purchases, which they are now doing...

Good for the shops, bad for consumers... but you cant have it both ways :)

In the interest of debate, I don't see why shops can't compete. One of the great things about the internet is that anyone can use it. Including the shopkeeper.

I do agree that business for a small hobby store must be harder than in yesteryear but business must evolve. Gone are the days of the monopoly, true, but that must be a positive, how long did people put up with poor service and high prices because there was no option.

One of the largest internet hobby stores is based here in yorkshire and love 'em or hate 'em, for me probably the latter, you do have to admire the way they have moved on a small shop to an international concern.

The guys that turn up on race days are another matter, as well as selling parts, they are providing a serice and so you expect to pay a premium, even though often you get good deals.

So in essence, yes, I agree, support your local store. But make sure they are helping themselves and not just taking you for granted.

I'm glad I got that off my chest!:D

if you choose not to support your model shops eventually there wont be any and that means, no new drivers and no track side shop.

exactly. then the clubs fold, as does the hobby.

I find it funny how people can come on here and advise people on how to get things through without paying tax etc....

If anyone involved in the Gov or Tax came on here he/she would have field day!!!!

I feel sorry for most shops in U.K as the RC market is not easy, and to be honest threads like this don't help!!!

We all really need to help out the local hobby shops and if anyone wants to use internet then fair play, but don't promote tax dodging....

Everyone puts the same posts, when this comes up and it causes unrest, think threads like this need to be removed really.

This seems to be...
 

...a hot topic - sorry about having started a new thread.

I have never tried to get a shop to change the value of goods as declared on the invoice, but I know this is a widely-used trick when bringing back stuff from a US trip. But even paying VAT and duties in Austria it was often way cheaper to order kits or electronics from the US.

I understand that it is important to support local shops, but (having run a small shop a long time ago) I also know that there is (was) a lot of profit on gear imported from the US (batteries, motors, etc.).

I don't have a problem buying a kit (such as a B4 for GBP150) here in the UK, but I have noticed that the cheapest 6-cell packs start at around GBP50 - this is much more expensive than in the US.

ive seen packs for £35 frm my local shop i think....

£50 for cells, you are looking in the wrong place....

There are ways and means of tax 'avoidance' or negating the 'amount' of tax that you pay, otherwise, it is 8% of the value of the goods on the invoice and then 17.5% ontop of that total. Now you could go and ask the seller to put a lower value on the goods invoice, but, what happens if it gets lost.... you can' put a claim in for goods at a value of $200 when the invoice states $100.

I have never asked an overseas seller to reduce the value on the invoice, if they wish to mark the item as a gift, that is up to them. I run a lot of Tamiya cars, and unless it is the bog stock stuff, it is absoloutely pointless trying to source them in the UK, so it requires a trip to a HK site, and usualy here within three to four days. But all my AE and Schumacher stuff comes from the UK.

On a side note, I had a fly in the ointment the other day when I recieve two Battery Nurses from Tekin as a sponsorship item. Now they have to declare the value on the invoice for insurance reasons. Now, I wrongly assumed that I didn't have to pay duty on sponsorship goods, as in effect, they are not mine, I have not bought them, but here goes. As the goods are sponsored, they must be marked up as 'Gift' and thats it, this then incurs a duty payment of 3.5% of the total 'goods' value on the invoice. My sponsor had marked them up as 'gift' and 'goods sample' which did not incur a duty charge, but VAT charge on the total of the goods AND shipping.

Chris Dyke on here sells the top IB4200's for £45, fully assembled including postage.

you can find cells much cheaper than £50 from various places. If you want Peak or Orion cells they will cost £50+, but pretty much every one else will be less than this

Sponsorships...
 

@ batteries: I had a look at APEX and some other sites, leaving me with prices of about GBP 50 or more.

@ sponsorships: I know a couple of guys who are sponsored by AE. In order to avoid paying taxes or duties, AE cuts off all prices from the packaging so that officials have
no way to prove how much the stuff is worth - this seemed to work i Austria.

just a little update for you, the advice given is of the governments own vat and tax web site and is freely available and is in no way illegal, all you have to do is be prepared to read for ages to find what you need,the world is a small place indeed, and if the suppliers cant sell to retailers at a decent price its them that should be shot, shops are having a hard time not because of people importing them selfs but because the big suppliers (no names mentioned) are to bloody greedy to sell on at a good price so the shops can compete,quick example you can buy a Schumacher touring car from the states which is made in the UK, at 2/3rds the price u can get it here in the UK
classic example of greed suppliers.as long as you pay vat its legal and above board, and for those that obviously no idea, import duty if you really feel u have to pay it.which on toys or scale models u don't is only 4% anyway

if the shops cant compete, which i know they cant do something about, i am and have,and am happy i did.

ps
i cant get and sell on smc ib 4200 race pack,s for under £40

All my cells usually come from Demon. Packs start at £23.50 upto £32.50:)
I have recommended loads of people and as far as I know they all came away happy.

ps:ignore the out of stock on the website, it nearly always says this, just phone up or email to check availability.

i take it your happy with the amount of tax you pay (in general) !!

If you are only looking at top spec cells buying them in the US you are looking at around £37 per pack - a lot cheaper than the UK. Then add postage costs to that, being generous say £3 per pack if you are buying several. Then it gets hit by duty on the £37 - makes it £3, then VAT on the whole lot including your postage costs brings the price up to £49, so not much cheaper than the big name brands but more expensive than most of the smaller battery suppliers which use exactly the same cells.


I'm also curious to know why I can buy an Mtroniks IP6 from Hong Kong for half the price I can buy it in the UK, considering it would have been transported to the other side of the world and back. Talking to my local shopkeeper he would actually sell at a loss at those prices.

Mark, I can appreciate where Spenner is coming from, and is quite right.... to an extent.

The amount of Tax we pay is innevitably out of out control, and by shopping abroad and being 'selective' with the invoice details, we can reduce the bill a little, but this does have an affect.

Even before the internet boom, a LHS round here was a general shop really and not a good one at that... Mr Harris's mum used to run a good one, and I would try to use that as much as possible. Now, I have to do ALL my racing shopping Mail Order, and now you are getting BIG shops as the little ones can't compete. And it isn't for the want of trying. What causes it, is the manufacturer will distribute in their own country and sell to international distributors, who have to earn a living, mark up oarts and hold stock, so by the time the poor shop owner gets it, he is already uncompetitive to 'internet' sites. So if you have a small shop, you have to pay extra for the pleasure, or you sell low but sell loads.

There are certain products you just can't get in the UK without major headaches, and fine, shop abroad, but for the majority, there realy is very little saving, but a far bigger effect in the longterm.

to confirm i do buy in the uk and suport my local shop, but it bugs the hell out of me the amount of taxes me and the shop have to cope with. the shop owner can not buy it in from uk distributers the same price as he could from hong pong

the usual six weekly thread reference buying and importing. there is little new here and the same arguments and opinions, equally the same misconceptions, i have said before i do not have a problem with people buying from the US, with currency exchange rate as it is then it does mean those on a budget can race cheaper, where my problem lies is those that use ways to avoid duty and actively tell people how to avoid it, and those that accuse people of ripping the uk market off when actively doing it themselves. for example those that put an order in to losi parts house and then advertise the parts for sale on a home made site. registered for VAT?, registered as a business with customs and excise?, registered with the local authority and paying business rates on the part of the house used for business?, paying business insurance on the part of the house used for business, etc etc, no of course not, but hey without those overheads you can sell really cheaply and pass the discount on can't you?, losi 1201 costs you 2.34gbp plus a bit of postage which is spread over the parts in the order, so whats your price going to be 2,50 maybe 3.00. no what you do is double it and add vat (which as you are not registered of course you won't be passing on to the government) and then sell it for 5.50 still cheaper than the uk rrp so you undercut the shops, so who is ripping who off?

more modest pricing
 

if the uk market was say 10% more expensive than the us converted prices nobody would have a problem but its supply and demand not the shops fault it should be people higher up the supply chain who should take a little less cake;)

why

there in it to make money, as much as they can, that said 10% assumes that you can do business in this country with the overheads and costs that entails. how much is warehouse space in this country compared with the US?, what about staff costs? etc.

how much of the extra money the uk distributors are making is actually profit?, how much is eaten up by the costs of business?

you would do a whole load more buisness if uk prices reflected prices globally:o people would not go abroad for there goods;) and in the us they have overheads too or do they live on fresh air:rolleyes:

Example...
 

Just a little example from my previous experience with dealers in Europe. There was an exclusive distributor for AE in Austria. Prices were calculated as follows (this could actually be found in the shop's catalog): take the recommended sales price from the AE parts catalog, and multiply by 20 to get the price in Austrian currency (no Euro at that time). Remarkably, this "method of calculating prices" did not take into account exchange rates, especially as the USD exchange rate dropped from about 1:16 to 1:12 around that time. Moreover, in the US, you rarely pay more than 60% of the recommended prices in shops. The results was that parts were usually half the price (or even less), without resorting to any tricks with VAT or duties (being 20% and 8% in Austria!).

Now, I don't know whether this specific example has any relevance to the UK market, but it shows that not every shop owner / distributor is living on small profits. Anyway, the shop I'm talking about lost most of its customers and is out of business by now.

top matched cells advertised on oople for less than that!!;)

buy an associated part in the uk and the packed maybe marked $4:99 and we pay £4:99, now the exchange rate is roughly 1.8$ to the £!!!!
so when im on my hols in the usa i can BOGOF :eh?:

just remember the importers pay no where near list us price so tax an duty is bugger all:(

My 2 pence. The effect it has on local RC shops & Distributors is quite obvious, and buying outside the UK on the net is a 'thorn in the side' for many people trying to make a living from this sport in the UK. My opinion - quite simple. Support your local RC Shop

Thats a good idea.... oh, you mean Buy One Get One Free lol

:) My son & I started RC racing just over 3 years ago with the ubiquitous Tamiya TL01 followed by a TB01 bought from our LHS. At this time spares for these models from our LHS were plentiful and seemed reasonably priced.
We stuck with Tamiya's through the Evo III Surikarn onto TRF415's followed by TB Evo 4MS's and now TB Evo 5's. The problems started with the Surikarn which I purchased from Fusion Hobbies. The car was great but trying to get spares here in the U.K. was hopeless. Our LHS told us that the U.K. importers did not suppport the high end models as there was no profit in them. They made far more out of kids buying and trashing TL01's in their local Tesco's car parks than they did supplying a small number of parts to those wanting to race. As a consequence we resorted to the internet and, although a few model shops over here are now stocking items for some of the better Tamiya cars, it was so quick and easy to order from HK that we rarely order any Tamiya spares from the U.K.
If our LHS/UK suppliers can provide what we want we're happy to support them, after all it's not their fault we have to pay VAT etc.
In the past 10 months we've bought 4 1/10 electric off road buggies and 2 1/8 th scale nitro truggies from our LHS. We've also bought our Nosram BL systems, countless spares/hop ups, motors, wheels tyres, cells etc. both from them and other U.K. based model shops if our LHS did not have them.
The big advantage of dealing with our LHS is that you can do a deal with them which you can't do buying abroad. With our LSP truggies we didn't want the radio gear or the stock servo's. They gave us an allowance back againts these items helping to keep the cost down of the servo's and Spektrum receivers we wanted instead, which they fitted while I waited.
Basically the bottom line for us is that if our LHS can supply what we want or need then we'll happily use them but if we need to we'll shop abroad. We do however try and avoid ordering from the US as dear old HM C&E seem to take more of an interest in stuff from there than HK or Japan for some reason?:)

well there are a few US model shops that do not add a price to the package, and if you can add comments they can do it as a gift so the UK tax man doesnt rip us off any more than they already are.