Does anyone know:

If you have a secondhand item shipped from outside the UK ie: USA will the item still incure import tax?

I seem to remember a bloke a few years back would ship american cars into this country in containers half stripped down as secondhand parts to avoid import taxes. Then he would put them back together and sell them.

If you use UPS or Fedex they seem to attract import duties and tax.

 

Sometimes Ive had stuff from other couriers and its git through no probs.

 

Luck o the draw methinks sometimes.

 

Marc

I seem to remember a bloke a few years back would ship american cars into this country in containers half stripped down as secondhand parts to avoid import taxes. Then he would put them back together and sell them.

 

That's because every item that is imported/exported has to have a Commodity Code. Different codes are subject to different amounts of duty/excise, depending on the local laws of the country being shipped to. So, a whole car has one code but componenet parts have differing codes, some of which might not be taxable at all.