One of the most common issues that our European supporters have with our operation has to do with customs and import duties. And they’re right to be upset; customs duties are assigned with little explanation, there are delays of days or weeks to process customs papers, and additional fees get tacked on that quickly become very expensive.
I’m very happy to share with all of our European supporters that all of this friction is disappearing.
The EU has been quietly rolling out a program called Import One-Stop Shop, or IOSS, for about five years. It’s primary function is fairly straightforward: to collect import paperwork and duties for a parcel electronically before that parcel actually lands in Europe.
We have been working on becoming compliant with IOSS for several months now, making sure that everything is working correctly and we’re fully compliant. I’m pleased to report that as of right now, we are fully compliant with IOSS.
But, what exactly does that mean, and why is that beneficial for our EU supporters?
The first benefit is that VAT will be collected for our European supporters by us during checkout. That means that we will be collecting and remitting VAT to the EU on your behalf.
That’s good because that means that you’ll know exactly what will be due for import duties, up front, with no surprises. There won’t be any guesswork anymore about how much VAT you’ll have to pay.
The second benefit is that customs processing time will be sharply reduced. Normally, it takes a while for the European customs offices to collect duties and paperwork, but with IOSS, all of that will be eliminated.
In other words, once the parcel lands in Europe, it won’t spend weeks in a customs office while someone tries to collect VAT from you. It’ll just start moving towards you.
The third benefit is a big one: VAT collection fees will be eliminated. Without IOSS, some country’s carriers would add VAT collection fees on top of the actual VAT. Some of these fees are as high as €20. Twenty euros, on top of the actual VAT!
With IOSS, there won’t be any of that anymore. Once you’ve gone through our checkout process, there won’t be any handling charges, clearance fees, or anything more. The parcel will show up at your door, and that will be that.
In other words, compliance with IOSS comes with a lot of benefits for our European supporters: full transparency about pricing, faster delivery times, and reduced customs fees.
We’re happy to see this rolling this out to all of our European supporters, and hope that it provides a better experience for all of you.
As our shop grows, we’ll continue engaging in these sorts of operational streamlining projects in order to make supporting our shop a better experience.
Stay tuned for more!