Man I hate this. Welcome to the Brexit, sir.
I don’t think the VAT changes are strictly related to brexit and is more about reflecting the way people shop now. I think Australia already doing it this way and I think the EU will be later this year. It’s one of those do it once now, rather than changing the rules for a second time later. Think about all the stuff coming in from outside the EU (e.g. direct from China).
They’ll be much less friction on this once all the other EU sellers have sorted themselves out as they will need to later this year.
You have always had the option to import stuff from outside the EU with taxes pre paid so it just goes straight through the boarder. It’s really just down to the arrangements the retailer has put in place to do it. It’s often referred to as a ‘landed price’ and the retailers sorts out the fees and duties etc with the carrier up front.
Done it loads of times and the retailers website just does it all automatically. You pay the retailer once, the product turns up a few days later with no extortionate additional fee that the carrier has added for the privilege of clearing it through customs (no issues with paying the tax actually due).
The real issue is that it’s more complex for the few small businesses that don’t want the hassle or are unwilling to pay for the relevant software to do it all for them.
