Ouch! It is to encourage home production I guess and pay for social programs

Same here in the UK. Recently I bought a waterproof MP3 player. It cost me around $100. By the time fed-ex got it to me it had incurred around $60 of additional charges .... tax, import duties and worst of all a massive fed-ex admin fee which was as much as doubling the tax and duty fees. They blame it on government as having to pay the import fees by law. What really sucks is that they are already being paid to deliver internationally and they go out of their way to jump on the taxes because they can more than double their profits by adding the admin charges ..... It's a total rip off and what really makes the purchase of the parts expensive. In my case the shipper forgot to included the headphones so these were sent separately. They stupidly marked the list value on the packet so I then got charged the tax twice plus .... The $35 admin fee again! Argh lol

I don't think that taxes can be avoided, but are there couriers that don't have extortionate fees for admin when they have already been paid to make an international delivery ?

Cheers

Jay

The only thing that will help is for the shipper to correctly fill in the customs declaration. They would need to know it is for educational use or a gift or whatever the purpose is. I can only suggest you use the Contact Us page to ask EZ-Robots to try and have them send it marked for education. Ultimately it will be down to the manufacturer who will ship it though.

A good rule of thumb, regardless of if anything send from overseas is a gift, for education or whatever is to always allow for and expect to have to pay duty etc.

I was stung with my BlinkM which the nice folks at ThingM sent me after a cheeky email to them, I paid more in duty and tax than I could have got a BlinkM over here for because the declaration was incorrectly filled out. I did try complaining to FedEx/DHL/Whoever only to be told that I pretty much had no choice but to pay them despite it not working out worthwhile and had I been asked I would have said not to accept it. I also complained about the admin fee but they wouldn't even budge on that either.

I also had a few other international shipping issues with some other items I've had in the past. For instance, I bought a guitar from Germany, £300 for the guitar, I had to pay over £100 to be allowed to pick it up! A blanket from the US, cost was about £30, duty & tax was more, for a blanket! I accept I need to pay tax (despite paying it on what I earn anyway!) but paying more than the item is worth just makes me sick.

International shipping is a nightmare, plain and simple! Sometimes it can't be avoided though.

I had a nice talk with an officer of the customs department.

You can be freed of duty + taxes if the products are mainly for educational purposes and you can proove it.

In my case its for teaching at school. I just have to give the customs department a writing of the school, that prooves, that the products are needed as educational tools and the invoice has to have a little hint somewhere, that its for educational purposes as well.

One original and 2 copies of the invoices should also be on the outside of the package inside a Package list - invoice-envelope. In Germany the envelope for the package list - invoice looks like this:

Makes things faster and they can deliver it right to your home. Otherwise you would have to drive to the customs office to pick up your stuff, because they arent allowed to open the package without you to reach the invoice. And the next customs office is often veeery far away.

You can also be freed if you need the products as a student for your academic studies. I am sure one of the professors can write an appropriate validation.

I hope my investigations help especially the pupils and students to save some bucks so they can spent even more cash on ez-bees^^

Might not be possible in all countries, but as far as I know its possible in all the EU-countries.