AFAIK, there would not be any customs payment required, unless the goods were on a restricted list - things like food, alcohol, tobacco, livestock, etc. As long as the VAT is paid in the EU country of origin, then you can send your goods at will. Cite:
As to whether it would be cheaper, in some cases possibly yes. Why aren’t people doing it like crazy at the moment? Maybe they are, through eBay. Or maybe Latvia doesn’t make anything suitable for export apart from restricted items, or maybe the price differential isn’t attractive enough, or the postage too high.
E.g. there are plenty of booze cruises etc. from Dover in England to Calais in France, where Brits take a van over and fill it to the brim with wine and cigarettes. Provided it is “for personal use only” then you’re completely OK. Similarly there are hypermarkets on the Germany/Denmark border where people from southern Denmark scoot over and do their grocery shopping. I’m sure there are dozens of other places where this is the case.
I will add that in the boomtimes in Ireland, I did hear of people flying to NYC to go shopping in the big outlet malls. I don’t know if they really did save money or if they were just conning themselves (weirdly at the time, people from Iceland would fly to Dublin to do the same thing).
There was a period where the flights to NYC were cheap and the exchange rate was particularly good, and a lot of Brits did fly over to NYC for a shopping weekend. Nowadays the flights are about 4x what they were then, the exchange rate has come down and disposable income is shrinking rapidly, so no one does that anymore.
Funnily enough, the town in Pennsylvania where I grew up had loads of outlet stores and we used to get busloads of New Yorkers coming down to shop. The grass is always greener etc.
For instance Helsingborg, Sweden / Helsingør , Denmark. The latter town is full of booze shops to serve the Swedes who take the short ferry trip across the Øresund to take advantage of the (relatively) cheaper alcohol prices in Denmark.
That’s amazing - grass is always greener. At Christmas I drove from Sønderborg, DK to Flensburg, DE, where I got 60 x 1/2 litre bottles of Staropramen for less than €30. :eek: Poor Swedes!
Don’t forget that in Sweden wines and spirits can only be bought from government run shops. Beer is available in supermarkets, but only to a maximum strength of 3.5%.
New York is also notable for its fashion outlets. I also knew a few people who would go to NY to buy high-end designer goods, though obviously they wanted to go to New York anyway; they basically wanted to have a holiday, pretend to be on Sex and the City and save a little money via tax-free shopping.
But whole families going to Florida just to buy clothes? Nah, no way. Even the cheapest out-of-season package holiday would be a thousand quid for a family of four. A suitcase each full of clothes (given that airline costs would add up for extra suitcases) is not going to make that back, nowhere near.
I’m tired and my brain’s fried, so I can’t quite tie this into the earlier question on mail order and tariffs, but playing with import/export rules is very popular when it comes to the (non-EU) tax havens of Europe.
Amazon UK uses a locally registered company in the Channel Islands, Indigo Starfish, to send many of its games, CDs and DVDs to fulfil mainland UK orders. VAT is not payable on items sent from outside the EU (like the Channel Islands) under £18 in value, so Indigo Starfish can undercut their mainland competitors and still save (considering VAT is 20%).
