Duty and VAT

This reminds of a time when my brother bought a small radio kit worth £25 sterling in 1983 duly sent in the post. When it arrived it had a bill from Customs of £30 punts (remember them?). Needless to say my father hit the roof and told the postman to return it. Things have not change. So much for the EU and customer choice.

Wrong century! Things have moved on a long way in the past 23 years. In 1983 duty was still imposed on some imports from other EU countries, the Single Market hadn't been completed. In fact if someone who had survived in a coma here in Ireland since 1983 woke up today they would find it hard to believe that they hadn't spent all of the life they remember prior to the coma on some mysterious 'island' like The Prisoner.

As a rule nowadays if I can't find something locally at the right price I look to other Eurozone countries first, then the UK and finally the US & Canada. Exchange rates and UK markups make purchasing from Eurozone outlets cheaper, particularly from Germany if they use DHL for shipping. Duty, shipping and insurance costs today put the US and Canada last. One thing I will not do is pay a local retailer more if I can get the same item with the same guarantee elsewhere for less. I do not appreciate being gouged.

One other small point: there has never been a 51% VAT rate on anything in this country, and if somebody was told so then they were being cheated. Given that I've been around longer than VAT, Punts and Euros I'm pretty sure of that. The only way someone could ever have paid anything close to that much would have been by buying something in another country and paying VAT again when taking it across a border. That cannot happen within the European Single Market today so whether it's a true recollection of an event in the distant past or a troll it's irrelevant.

The past is another country, they do things differently there. (The Go Between, LP Hartley)