Testing the Euro / IOSS

This thread is being directed to customers / potential customers in the EU.

Recently our website www.arceurotrade.co.uk has been updated so that anyone arriving to it from any one of the 27 EU countries are presented with prices in Euros only, excluding U.K. VAT. The site/shopping cart takes payment in Euros only, for all customers from EU.

The prices stated are excluding VAT. Unfortunately, this still means that the postal service and couriers will charge customers a handling/facility customs entry charge along with local duties/taxes before delivering goods, as explained here on our website.

At present we understand that some of these charges may be too expensive to consider for low value orders.

To enable us to get the destination postal service and couriers handling/facility customs entry charge reduced or removed in the future, our next step is to supply goods to EU customers VAT paid, under IOSS, for goods valued up to Euros 150.00 - excluding handling, carriage and vat.

To enable us to get ready for this, I would like to invite two or three EU based customers to participate in an experiment with us, to see how the new idea could flow. Appropriate discounts will be available - by way of a thank you for participating in the experiment.

To participate in the experiment, you would need to have an order you would like to place with ARC, ideally for goods value equal to or a little above 150 Euros excluding VAT handling and carriage.

As this is an experiment, at present you will not be able to place such orders through the website.

If you would like to participate in this experiment, please pm me with your contact details in the first instance. This experiment will only be open until 25th July 2021.

Ketan at ARC

I have a feeling you might not be selling too much to anyone in the EU, with all the extra charges involved.

Interesting times indeed.

Its up and down Larry since 1st January. We have obviously seen a reduction in low value orders, and an increase in high value orders of assorted items. Nothing has really changed post 1st July in this respect.

However, if we can get correct co-operation between the postal services, couriers and IOSS under the experiment, we are hoping to offer a seamless order to delivery process, as it was pre- 1st January.

Ketan at ARC

What’s IOSS.?

[This posting has been removed]

Ketan can you say anything about when you'll enable/join IOSS? For smaller orders the VAT handeling fees are really annoying - or more correctly a showstopper.

Best regards,
Kenneth

Hi Kenneth,

Apologies for the delay in response. For some reason I failed to get a notification email for this thread. I have re-marked it to send me a notification if there is an update in the future.

We have joined the IOSS system and tested it out manually. We found that there are fun and games involved depending on interpretation of rules by the customs of different EU states. To standardise the process to make things easier is taking time, as we are having to get the couriers and their counterparts/customs to do things correctly.

As a temporary measure, on a case by case basis, if you want ARC to consider your order through the IOSS process, or duty tax paid(DTP/DDP) process for orders valued over Euros 150, take a snapshot of your order before checkout and email it to ARC. In subject line state FAO Ian - regarding IOSS. Please state your full name, address, telephone contact details in your email. Ian will then get back to you with IOSS compliant proforma for your consideration. If workable, he will guide you through the payment process. This idea is a temporary suggestion, for consideration on a case by case basis, BEFORE any order is finalised. We are unable to consider this idea once an order is placed.

The IOSS/DTP/DDP options are only available to retail customers, and not to B2B EU VAT registered businesses,/individuals who are unable to use the IOSS/DTP/DDP to claim back their VAT.

Over the past few months I have been working with our website developers to make the whole process automated. As our website links into our order processing/accounts software, making the courier API to integrate with our site and our site to integrate the IOSS back office process correctly with our accounting software and reporting VAT collected monthly for each of the 27 states in the EU to a specific IOSS tax authority, is a lovely long winded process.

The test site to test out the process for IOSS and DTP is hoped to be ready during next week. It is overdue by about a month due to various complications. So the next stage will be to test and try to iron out the bugs, before going live. If all goes to plan, it is hoped that the new site will go live in about a month, or latest by early next year.

Ketan at ARC

Thank you very much for the detailed answer. I am not surprised th this is overly complicated to do

BR
Kenneth

Update for Kenneth and other EU customers (27 states):

On 12th February we updated our site to deal with EU customers, be it IOSS or above duties and taxes paid to destination country.

All prices have been quoted for EU customers in Euros for a while now. However, from 12th February, all handling, courier/carriage, destination country duties/taxes to the 27 EU states will be added and collected at the checkout. This is to make sure that such order reach EU customers faster as all customs formalities and payments will be completed by us in advance on EU customers behalf.

We are aware that such costs for low value orders are still high. We are regularly reviewing this with our carriers with hope that the logistical costs for low value orders could reduce over time.

This procedure will be applied to all EU orders, EXCLUDING orders for machines which weigh over 70kgs., and EXCLUDING business to business (B2B) orders. Updated terms can be found here on our site.

https://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/projects/Info/eu-terms-2022.html

Quite a few orders have come through post change, and we are happy with the initial response from EU customers. Thank you for your custom.

Ketan at ARC

What a nightmare, Though I hope there' s light at the endof the tunnel ! Good luck and best wishes Ketan , Noel..

Hi Noel,

Thank you for your kind wishes. For me it wasn't a nightmare.

I have approached this as a project. An opportunity to re-use the skills which I learned in the 1980s at Collage and night school leading to Institute of Export qualification, followed by earlier employment in Import/Export Sales department at Pepe Jeans, where I ultimately utilised these skills and learned more in the Import/Export trade, specialising in working with U.K.DTI, HMRC Customs and foreign customs.

According to Wikipedia, in 1993 the EU became a single market, resulting in free movement of goods between member states including the U.K.. As a result, everyone became an importer/exporter, and as the internet grew, with the growth of Amazon and eBay and such platforms, it became easy for anyone to import/export goods. So demands, understanding and use of skills I had learned became more or less redundant over time.

Then came BREXIT

So now came an opportunity to use my skills again, which were mothballed for a long time. From what I could see, everything in terms of export procedures including customs entries U.K. and EU and tarriff codes, terms and procedures are still more or less the same as they were pre-1993.

If anything, it is much more easier to do things now then they were pre-1993. Easier to look up tarriff code, prepare information to give to the couriers etc.. No more having to sit at a golf ball typewriter having to fill out documents in sets of 6, making mistakes and re-typing. No more having to look up tarriff codes in big 5" thick two volume tarriff books. No more looking up Croner Trade Guide book for every country. Everything now is electronic and on-line. In theory, this makes the job easier.

However, the new generation of employees in retail sales companies, HMRC U.K., Department of Trade, overseas customs in the 27 states, as well as postal systems, and couriers were not prepared post BREXIT. Nothing to do with government. More to do with the fact that most of them do not have the qualifications required, because they too were all used to the easy life pre-BREXIT.

RESULT: The sales reps for the couriers in my region tell me that most independent companies of similar size to us in their portfolio have heavily reduced their sales into EU, or given up retail IOSS/DTP e-commerce exporting to EU. A blue chip company near us with multi-million pounds retail e-commerce sales into EU has also given up. Many are doing such business through Amazon, eBay and such platforms, to get around 'the perceived headache'. This is understandable, but sad.

The time, effort and cost to implement these changes is huge. I went into this project out of self interest. Although I have enjoyed the ups and downs with the process, it is too early to say how well it will work, and how long it will take to payback the investment.

Ketan at ARC

Edited By Ketan Swali on 06/03/2022 12:03:41

Hi All,

As an eBay seller the recent customs tightening up has been a bit of a nightmare.

All stuff we now sell to customers in the EU require that we use the Royal Mail Click & Collect website and then take the items to our local Post Office to get the proof of posting slip or get the Signed For tracking numbers onto the system.

We could print our own proof of posting slips but this would mean that we need 3 A4 sheets for each label instead of 2, most of which we bin after cutting out the labels.

We have had items returned, (sometimes 4 months later) as they will not accept folded customs docs in the plastic envelopes any more, they must be visible.

All items get the EBay IOSS number of IM2760000742

Recently we have had to get our own EORI number as the RM website now requires this in order to work. This took 4 days to be recognised on the HMRC system which delayed shipping on 26 items.

We have generated a list of all the myriad Customs codes for the many varied item that we sell, took a long time!

It certainly makes it all much more time consuming.

I think we have now pretty much got it sorted out,(hopefully!)

Ketan, thanks for your time chatting to me about this.

Regards, Martin

I know nothing of IOSS and live in Scotland (part of the UK so far), but hats off to Ketan for getting on with it.

Martin

Thank you very much for the update Ketan, and great that’t is now possible

Best regards
Kenneth