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A couple of years ago, mid Covid19, EU changed the rules, eliminating import VAT minimum value thresholds. Prior to that, low value packages were not taxed (15 euro or less). Now, EVERYTHING is taxable, even if I send you one plastic nut its value will be taxable.?

At the same (or similar) time they implemented rules that foreign sellers should collect tax on their behalf, at point?of sale, and make tax declarations to the EU governments. This is completely impractical for a small business. So apparently (though it did not seem so at the time), foreign?sellers who don't have the resources to be able to do this tax collector role for the EU governments, can still send things the old way and have the import tax charged at point of entry.?

Furthermore, although you may point out that UK is no longer EU since "Brexit", the UK did also choose to follow the same rules as EU on this. Presumably as it had been already planned somewhat pre-Brexit or perhaps because the UK government also thought it was a good idea.?

Accordingly since I do not live inside EU/UK, and since I do not therefore even cast a vote involving the election of these morons who love taxing the hell out of everything that moves (and quite a lot that doesn't), all QRP Labs shipments to EU/UK are theoretically subject to import VAT. The import VAT is the responsibility of the purchaser, including that in many cases the cargo company (whether regular post office or TNT/FedEx courier) will also charge an administration fee.?

Two things do mitigate the damage or at least tend to do so:

Firstly in many EU countries and UK, the government still don't have the resources to deal with import VAT taxation on all small packages even of low value. The Germans are super-efficient and manage it. But many countries do not. Therefore in many cases there is nothing to pay, no VAT.?

Secondly, QRP Labs' shipping office have been known, of course on rare occasions, to make errors on the valuation declaration, and in these rare cases, the import VAT therefore due is of course much lower anyway; and normally the import VAT?+ admin fee is anyway much less than would have been taken in a point-of-sale scenario.?

The latter was the case in both Peter's and Chris' cases; I am not sure why Peter's bill was high.?