That fast fashion impulse buy will cost you more soon

Clearly this includes low value items from the UK too.

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Hopefully only physical items, I wouldn’t want my Kindle stream interrupted. :astonished_face:

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Most of us probably didn’t have you down as a fast fashion victim…

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I might be asking the wrong question but I’m confused by this. The last time I had a parcel from the UK, there was a ‘duty free’ allowance coming into France of 43 or 45 euros. Is that staying or going please?

To recap…
On 01/03/2026 France is bringing in the flat rate 2€ on everything valued between 0€ & 150€ arriving in parcels from outside the EU. This is ahead of the EU ruling which then applies on 01/07/2026.

I imagine that the customs charge on items above the 45€ (or is it £s?) from the UK will still apply.

Just think of it as yet another Brexit bonus…

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Anotber barrier to world trade that will lead to higher costs and less choice for everyone.

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So, buy local.

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You winding me up?

Typical dumb EU view of things, “Surely they will buy local now”

Meanwhile poland : Thanks for the jobs guys, opening a few more warehouses.

Suddenly all chinese packages come from Poland / Czech republic.
Not sure what this is supposed to achieve?

Ordered 20 items for fun today to see how it will go, planning to pay by individual cents.
The reason people don’t buy local is due to lack of service and French rebranding, why should i pay 200,- for a product because it has a little flag on it?
You surely can put a bit more effort and maybe you’ll actually sell something. Similar for service, how come a chinese 1 man operation on aliexpress has generally better customer service than 9/10 french companies :sob:

These type of changes make we want to avoid that at all cost.
Macaroni man needs to be a little less like uncle donald. Can’t blame him to much though given hes been groomed.

What are you talking about?

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So, if we have a fixed fee charge for importing goods less than €150 from outside the EU, what I want to know is how that is recovered ? Are we going to have a situation where the delivery company will demand € 2 with a € 20 ‘handling charge’ ?

Edit: Read the document attached in the article and it says the entity responsible for collecting the TVA willalso be responsible for collecting the € 2 small parcell levy. So in the case of AliExpress for example, they will collect the € 2 and it should be included in the price as TVA is. In theory :thinking:

Probably, going by the way things seem to work out locally. It’s another of those concealed job creation plans and tax raisers instead of actually changing things so businesses especially small and medium ones, are more productive, instead of constantly having administrative complications heaped on them.

Businesses are not productive, taxes are just piled on everywhere to make up the gap.

The government document makes clear that it’s not the responsibility of the receiver of the goods to pay the charge, but it’s collected along with TVA, as long as the seller of the goods is responsible for collecting TVA. So, AliExpress and similar online platforms will collect it and send it on. It makes sense really to use the existing mechanism.

Yes but the issue is that it’s rare for an international seller to ship DDP ie vat and duty pre paid. A few sophisticated senders do like Amazon.

Far more likely a sender does not prepay French VAT when they send. So it will be due from receiver if they want their package. As will any other duty or tax due. Plus handling charges as soon as even 1 Euro of due VAT or other tax or duty is due. La Poste’s handling charge is currently close to 10 euros and IME international courier companies range 15 - 25 euros handling charge as well as VAT or tax not paid by sender.

Many, many senders don’t even take their local VAT off, even when entitled to if the item is being exported. So receiver often ends up paying receiving country VAT and tax as well as already having paid VAT eg in the UK. Oh, and handling charge often disproportionate to the cost of the item.

AliExpress collect and pass on TVA for all items sold on their platform, but not duty. The extra €2 per type of item is added to the TVA and collected and passed on through the TVA mechanism. This is the only official way for the money to be collected when the seller collects TVA. I can’t speak for other international commerce platforms, but if they collect TVA, they collect this payment as well. I’ve bought several things less than € 150 from AliExpress and have never had to pay duty or TVA on any shipment coming from outside the EU.

“as long as the seller of the goods is the one paying the French VAT ie TVA”

This is the key point. You might be OK with Alibaba and I might be with Amazon because they do pay over the VAT / TVA to France. But the little sellers are not going to be doing that so receivers here risk big handling charges being added at delivery.

I think it may lead to more and more sellers of desirable things simply refusing to send to France / EU over time. As people hit with a disproportionate amount to pay when they receive something either won’t order again or will refuse delivery and/or complain to the seller.

Can I blame Mr. Trump for this somehow? So much progress in free trade over the past 80 years or so aeems to be being unwound and people having to pay more for less choice.

How many people buy from small independant sellers in China ? People buy from online platforms such as AliExpress, Shein, Temu, Amazon etc, and they will all collect this tax as all these platforms collect TVA on all transactions made on their platforms.