I hope that I'm not beating a dead horse, but I'm interested in how this works.
VAT is charged on the sum of item cost + S&H; since it's a fixed rate and we know how much they charged, we can use that to verify the USD to GBP conversion rate when they billed you:
£16.65 = (($138.95 + $48) * .175) / (x $/£)
x $/£ = $186.95 * .175 / £16.65 = 1.965 $/£
Import Duty should only be charged on the price for the knife; We know what they charged, but I'd like to know the rate, so:
rate = £7.45 * 1.965 $/£ / $138.95 = .105 = 10.5%
The Parcelforce 'Clearance fee' seems to be a fixed and somewhat arbitrary fee that, if I read the references correctly is charged for little more than the service of collecting the Import Duty and VAT. I found these references:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=323766, which took me to this one:
http://shopping.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,876207,00.htmlThe second site's info is 5 years old, so this is a longstanding problem -- it's nuts to have to pay that much as a fee for collecting the taxes. Also, on a different but related tax issue, I've read that what you pay for gas in the UK is about 70% taxes; is that true? If so, you're paying £7 in tax on £3 worth of gas, which would be a tax rate of 233% -- that's huge.
