Buying a phone from the USA, VAT + tax
Summary: jano3779 started a topic about buying a phone from the USA and the related VAT and tax issues. In response, he analyzed his concerns about this process.
Hello, I want to order an old phone from the USA for my collection. The price is reasonable, since it's $33 + $26 for shipping. The only question is, for whom is this tax and VAT that I see in the transaction summary being paid? For the USA or for our authorities, locally? I just want to know whether, when the package arrives in Poland, I will still be forced by customs to pay an additional 23% VAT?
I already have various experiences related to this. This year I bought 3 phones from the United Kingdom. In all cases I was forced to send customs a screenshot of the transaction confirming payment of VAT. In two cases customs decided everything was fine and let the package through without additional charges, while the last time in August they insisted that they had to charge me VAT even though Ebay had already collected VAT from me.
jano3779
OP9 months agoI added a screenshot as an attachment, but I can see it seems to have a display issue. Generally, in the transaction summary there is something like this:
Order Summary
Item (1) $33.00
Shipping $26.47
Tax $0.46
VAT $13.68
Order total $73.15
Order total in PLN zł272.88
Looking at the VAT amount, it corresponds to 23% of the delivery and shipping total.