When importing products from other countries to the UK, what seems like a good deal may not be a great decision once import duty has been calculated and added onto the price of shipping your international item.
There may be times when a product just isn’t available in the UK so you would want to know if it is an expense you can afford. An import duty calculator can help you determine what the final cost to you will be after all import taxes have been paid so that you can decide whether or not you could get a better deal in the UK, and get a fairly precise total on what you will be paying in order to make your decision.
An import tax calculator is generally an easy to use software programme which you can find online. Although people who are in the import/export business may have computer software on their business computers, most of us choose a free online import duty calculators because we rarely need to use them. Most online programmes are a single screen which will ask you a few basic questions and within moments you will have the bottom line price after duty and VAT.
How Does a UK Import Duty Rates Calculator Work?
The first two questions you will be asked on the UK import tax calculator will pertain to the country of origin and where it is being imported to – in this case, the UK.
Following this, you may be asked for a product description, the product category and the value of the product. Since shipping and insurance costs are also calculated into the final price, you should be asked for that information as well. After hitting a ‘calculate’ button, the screen will change and the results will tell you the total you paid with shipping and insurance. The import tax calculator will also give you a figure for duty and VAT as well as the total taxes and the total cost on landing.
For example. let’s say that you found an Amazon Kindle for $79 USD (£51) with a shipping cost of £12 and insurance costs £5. The total cost with shipping and insurance would total £68 but after import duty and VAT, you find that the total is £81.60. Since the total price was less than £135 there is no import duty, but VAT is £13.60. The import duty doesn’t affect the price but the VAT does.
Now you simply need to see if you can find the same Kindle for a better price in the UK. The duty rate would have been 3.7% if it had totalled enough money and the VAT rate was 20%.
Most consumers use an online import duty calculator when they are importing just a few items to see if they are getting a good price. Although import/export firms use this type of calculator daily in the course of their day to day operations, many have their own programs on their office computers. If you are contemplating importing a product from another country and would like to know the bottom line, an online import duty calculator can be a very handy tool.
