Birthday gift takes unexpected journey after sender is caught out by tax rules
If you receive a gift from overseas you could be hit with a 20% import charge – or the mail returned to the sender if you are not at home when it arrives.
That is exactly what happened to bemused pensioner Mary Cherrie.
Mary, from Loanhead, Midlothian, recently received a birthday present from New Zealand six months late – after it went halfway around the world three times.
Her cousin Zena Munden posted a handmade tablecloth to her from Tokoroa in New Zealand’s North Island at the start of the year.
She sent it for Mary’s 88th birthday in January and paid the equivalent of £14 for postage. The present arrived on time. But no one was home to pay an £18 import tax that was slapped on the parcel
– so the postman simply took it away again. The package was eventually returned 11,200 miles to Tokoroa.
“Five months later it came back to me in New Zealand,” Zena said. “I had no idea Mary would need to pay an import tax to receive it.
“The mistake I made was valuing it at about £90 when I filled in a postal form in New Zealand, which I since discovered means UK tax would be due.”
Two weeks ago Zena paid another £14 to repost the tablecloth but valued it at about £35. It arrived with no tax payable. The belated gift had travelled about 34,000 miles in total.
The Royal Mail said the current VAT threshold for goods sent into the UK is £39 for gifts (from one individual to another).