Items over €175, coming back from NY - penalty?

[zag]

Coming back from Amsterdam recently, there was a guy on the plane with a PS3 box for his carry on luggage.

I remember thinking . . . "Surely he's not going to try walking past the customs guys with that box under his arm ?"

Sure enough, on the way through customs in Dublin there he was having an in depth conversation with a customs officer while another customs officer was having an in depth check of his luggage.

Whatever about the rights and wrongs of this type of thing, the very least you should do is *not flaunt the stuff* in front of the customs guys.

z

 

[MugsGame]

Re: Items over €175, coming back from NY - penalty?

While not disagreeing with your sentiment, there is no duty for personal imports between EU countries, so he didn't have anything to hide, provided he bought the PS3 within the EU. The customs guys may have been checking his point of origin, or whatever else he was importing from Amsterdam

 

[orka]

thanks for all replies everyone. Taking in to account that children's clothes will not be charged duty, it turns out that I will not have more than 175 euro worth of items bought after all, so I will not be smuggling or trying to evade tax.
Phew!

There may be no VAT on children's clothes but I think duty IS payable at the same rate as adult clothes - so 27%.

 

[mell61]

I read a piece recently from the UK customs and excise saying basically that they were happy to depend on peoples honesty in terms of what they brought into the UK from outside the EU, as their resourses were best used to try and catch more serious criminal offenses, like drugs, illegal immigration, etc....
seems like a pretty sensible arguement to me for deploying resources.

 

[John Rambo]

I'm not sure that it is all that smart to take advise which seems to be based on the assumption that Customs Officers are plain thick and have never considered the possibility that travellers will try to evade tax.

It reminds of those TV licence ads which just might make people realise that childish excuses don't work.

I don't think you're comparing like with like. If someone were to do this and removes all tags receipts etc it's impossible to prove. The Customs people can give you grief and sweat you down but cannot prove anything. The key is not to snap.Again, people ahould pay all relevant duties.

 

[foxylady]

If customs go mad and start taking all peoples purchases off them when returning from shopping trips to the states, then surely this will put people off going and hence bad business for aer lingus

 

[John Rambo]

If customs go mad and start taking all peoples purchases off them when returning from shopping trips to the states, then surely this will put people off going and hence bad business for aer lingus

Customs have nothing to do with Aer Lingus or the DAA. They're a government agency.

 

[MB05]

Maybe if the limit was more realistic people would observe it. I am not a big shopper so I doubt I am ever over it but €175 isn't realistic in modern terms. It's like stamp duty a few years ago for first time buyers. When I bought my house the 0% rate was under €190k for a second hand house. You couldn't buy a house in Dublin for that so the exemption was useless. I think if they raised the limit to €500 most people would declare what they bought.

 

[RainyDay]

I don't think you're comparing like with like. If someone were to do this and removes all tags receipts etc it's impossible to prove. The Customs people can give you grief and sweat you down but cannot prove anything. The key is not to snap.Again, people ahould pay all relevant duties.

I understand that technically, they don't have to prove anything. You have to prove that you paid all appropriate duties regardless of where you bought the products, so it is up to you to produce reciepts or other proof of purchase in Ireland. Assuming that you are smarter than them is just a bit silly.

 

[rob30]

I find it hilarious that you can only bring home 175 euro worth of stuff from the US before you have to declare it, when you consider just how much we are spending on hotels, entertainment and food over there.
Think again, how much money people would spend on having cosmetic surgery done in the US, to avoid the stigma of being found out at home. I would love to see customs challenge someone with pert lips and a well defined nose as to its origins!
This " big time" spending on dinners out, hotels, helicopter trips etc is a much bigger drain on the nations coffers than the derisory amount of VAT forgone on clothing! This low personal limits surely is a hangover from the times of exchange control when we were close to being bankrupted in the 1980s, and needs reforming.

 

[John Rambo]

I understand that technically, they don't have to prove anything. You have to prove that you paid all appropriate duties regardless of where you bought the products, so it is up to you to produce reciepts or other proof of purchase in Ireland. Assuming that you are smarter than them is just a bit silly.

I don't agree...nobody is claiming to be smarter than them so that's not particularly relevant. My point is that when they pull people aside invariably they come clean. If on the other hand, an impasse is reached where they are suggesting items were purchased outside the EU while the traveller is insisting the items were not, the only conclusion can be no sanction. We're talking about something that cannot be proven. What are they going to use, carbon dating?

 

[RainyDay]

If on the other hand, an impasse is reached where they are suggesting items were purchased outside the EU while the traveller is insisting the items were not, the only conclusion can be no sanction. We're talking about something that cannot be proven. What are they going to use, carbon dating?

I guess you didn't read my last post, so I'll try it again.

I understand that technically, they don't have to prove anything. You have to prove that you paid all appropriate duties regardless of where you bought the products, so it is up to you to produce reciepts or other proof of purchase in Ireland.

Assuming that you get away with breaking the law using a facile excuse is just silly. You're in 'dog eat my homework' territory.

 

[kellysayers]

So just say I did buy a pair of Levi jeans back home two years ago and wear them to the states and pack them in my bags coming back, the customs come across them in the bag and its up to me to prove that I bought them two years ago back home with proof of a receipt........come on. Only a compulsive obsessive keeps receipts for that long.

 

[John Rambo]

I guess you didn't read my last post, so I'll try it againAssuming that you get away with breaking the law using a facile excuse is just silly. You're in 'dog eat my homework' territory.

Don't be patronising...it's "dog ate my homework territory", merely common sense. As Kellysayers has said, what are they going to do? Demand to see receipts? I travel over to New York every year and buy clothes which are similar to the ones I wear anyway. We're talking about the reality of the situation but you seem to wish to have some kind of lofty discussion about "silly excuses". If you've a jumper folded in your suitcase with no tags on it how does the discussion go with the Customs official? Your comparison with TV licences is ridiculous as there are technical issues there. "Where and when did you get this jumper?" "In Arnotts a couple of months ago""Can you prove this?" "Not really, and I'm not being funny but could you?""OK, move along"On the other hand if someone starts splutering and blushing and saying "Mmmm, ehhhh" then I'm sure they get hit.Of course people should pay the relevant duties etc but the reality at the moment is millions of Euro are being lost to the Exchequer.

 

[DublinTexas]

I don’t think that customs is too much concerned with your 1 or 2 Levis jeans but more with people which spend for example 2000$ in the US on new clothes (which even if you remove tags and get them washed still will have the nice new look).

On that 2000 $ the revenue looses 27% import duties and 21 % Vat on top, so we are talking 1073.4$ that they would have otherwise got, if you declared it or to a smaller extend if it got imported to a shop in Ireland.

So bringing it in the country without declaring you just defrauded the Irish tax payer of 1073.40$.
Money we urgently need to pay for ministerial salaries or to keep the health service alive (Sarcasm applied).

In any case, especially on some better quality clothes for example there are manufactures’ “anti fraud” labels that give information as to in which country this item is for sale (Boss for example does that or Zenga and some other “higher” brand items), so your I purchased it at Arnotts might not work.

My personal experience is that if you go to the red channel and tell the customs officer that you have to declare personal shopping s/he usually asks you for the value and then tells you to go off without any charges.

 

[ubiquitous]

This low personal limits surely is a hangover from the times of exchange control when we were close to being bankrupted in the 1980s, and needs reforming.

Maybe if the limit was more realistic people would observe it.

I read a piece recently from the UK customs and excise saying basically that they were happy to depend on peoples honesty in terms of what they brought into the UK from outside the EU, as their resourses were best used to try and catch more serious criminal offenses, like drugs, illegal immigration, etc....
seems like a pretty sensible arguement to me for deploying resources.

These three points sum up the entire debacle in a nutshell. Of course, given the prevalence and vehemence of the "all tax evaders should go to jail, no matter what" philosophy in this country, it seems that no-one in authority is brave enough to shout "stop" and admit that the law in this regard is an ass.

 

[ubiquitous]

So bringing it in the country without declaring you just defrauded the Irish tax payer of 1073.40$.]

So, if I go up North to Newry or Enniskillen and buy €1,000 worth of goods, I have defrauded the Irish taxpayer of the VAT I would have paid had I bought the goods south of the border

 

[orka]

So, if I go up North to Newry or Enniskillen and buy €1,000 worth of goods, I have defrauded the Irish taxpayer of the VAT I would have paid had I bought the goods south of the border

You won't have defrauded the taxpayer because what you have done is perfectly legal and no extra vat/duties are payable. Whereas coming back from the US, anything over $175 should have duties/VAT paid on them.

I agree with previous posters that the current limit is too low and just encourages evasion. I wouldn't consider myself the smuggling type but coming back from NY a few weeks ago, we had toyed with the idea of declaring anything over $175, more to save the stress of 'what if we're stopped' but then, having asked here for experiences of the red channel and gotten a deafening silence (plus some 'are you serious, why bother, take the tags off'? etc), we decided not to be the only muppets to pay duties. And that's how I rationalise it - I pay lots of tax and wouldnt dream of trying to evade that, partly I suppose because it's the right thing to do and everyone pays their fair share etc. But as far as I can see, very very very few people declare stuff coming back from the US, so I think I would be paying much more than a 'fair share' if I did declare and pay.

 

[ubiquitous]

In the 1980s and up until the EU Single Market came into being in 1992, a great fuss was made at Border postings about people shopping in Enniskillen, Derry, Armagh, Newry etc and bringing their shopping (alcohol, groceries, clothes) back home across the border.

Every little border town or village had its own, well-staffed customs post and according to stories it was not uncommon for cross-border shoppers to be stopped and forced to pay a few quid in duty on their purchases. 20 years later, this sounds all very quaint until you consider that the Revenue as a whole was grossly understaffed at the time and that billions were being evaded in income tax, VAT etc while the customs guys were collecting pennies on the side of the road.

These days people are worrying about bringing back a few hundred euro worth of jeans from the US and are being labelled as spongers and evaders if they don't pay the duty. At the same time, drug traffickers are importing unprecedented volumes of illegal narcotics. Plus ca change...

 

[kellysayers]

If the retailers and the taxman (a double act) in Ireland were not so greedy this problem would not exist. How can the likes of Tommy Hilfilger justify charging €100.00 for a polo shirt that I can get in the US for $35.00. I know costs are higher in Ireland but they are not that higher.

A reform of the tax system and a change of attitude by greedy retailers is what is needed, then everyone will benefit.....the taxman, retailer and customer.