Advice on shipping a telescope.

Hi everyone. Ive recently been investigating how to purchase an 11" SCT without putting my granny on e bay. Eventually i found a dealer in Taronto that ships to Ireland. www.kendrick-ai.com/astro/order.html
CPC 1100 GPS (XLT)- 2530 euro. Nexstar 11" GPS (XLT)- 3167 euro.
I suppose the shipping would cost 500 or so. I was just wondering if anyone knows how the tax system works. Can i ship it in without paying tax on it? Any advice would be much appreciated.

Mikey.

Hi Mikey,
I PM'd you on this.
Keith

Mikey --

Customs is going to want 21% VAT and something like 4 or 4.5% duty. If you get it shipped in through the North, the VAT part goes down to 17%.

-- Jeff.

The total cost when importing from the US to Ireland is calculated as;

Item cost
+
Shipping cost
+
Import Duty (4% I think)
+
VAT (21%) - Yup, applied on the whole lot, including shipping
+
Customs clearance charge (€20 or so)

The piece to watch out for is the 4% PLUS 21%

Duty on telescopes and associated equipment including mounts, but excluding imaging hardware, is 4.3%. I forget the TARIC code but 4.3% it is for sure.

And as mentioned, the 21% VAT is 21% of the goods, duty, shipping and insurance. So you're paying VAT on the duty - tax on tax

Of course, that's the kosher method. There are methods of reducing the cost by virtue of the description of the goods etc etc...

Cheers

Dave

Thanks for all the advice guys. Im seriously considering flying over to Toronto and picking the scope up myself. Hopefully i could just bring it back with no questions asked. Zoom airlines do relativly cheap flights to Toronto from Belfast so id save money and get a bit of a holiday too.

Nice one.

Mikey