From January 1, 2020, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) has reduced the duty-free threshold for importing goods from foreign online stores. In 2019, duties were in effect for parcels with a total value of € 500 per month; in 2020, without duties, it will be possible to bring goods worth less than € 200 per purchase to Russia and other EAEU countries. If the purchase price is exceeded € 200, you will need to pay 15% of the cost, but not less than € 2 per 1 kg. The duty-free purchase weight remains unchanged at 31 kg.
In early December, the media, citing the Ministry of Finance, reported on the ministry's initiative to reduce the threshold for duty-free import of goods from foreign online stores to € 100 from July 2020, to € 50 from 2021 and to € 20 from 2022.
To simplify the process of paying customs duties, back in January 2019, Russian Post and the FCS launched a pilot project to collect duties online so that the buyer can pay tax at the time of purchase. According to the plan announced by the partners, up to 90% of foreign online players should connect to the service. “This project made it possible to simplify and speed up customs clearance when goods arrived in Russia, and to transfer customs payments to a fast online format,” the postal operator assured, adding that so far the Joom and AliExpress marketplaces have connected to the system ...
The partners fulfilled the formally announced plan to connect 90% of the players: according to the Association of Internet Trade Companies (ACIT), 92% of all cross-border trade falls on parcels from China, where AliExpress and Joom are the main operators.
However, market participants believe that there will still be problems in connection with the innovation. The head of the National Association of Distance Selling (NADT), Alexander Ivanov, in an interview with RBC, recalled that if earlier the limit was calculated for the entire amount of purchases per month, now the threshold is € 200 per parcel. “This rule leads to significant administrative losses, since it is much more difficult to process each parcel separately. In all countries, the experiments on the collection of duties on the basis of the cost of one parcel were found to be unsuccessful. In the United States, for example, they tried to impose a tax on each parcel more expensive than $ 200, but it turned out that the costs of collecting this duty were higher than the tax collected. As a result, the threshold was raised to $ 800, ”Ivanov said.
Another interlocutor of RBC in the online trading market agrees with this. “The experiment of collecting duties through an authorized operator paid off in 2019. Nevertheless, an increase in the number of parcels subject to customs inspection can be expected, which may lead to an additional burden on the customs authorities,” he said.
According to Ivanov, if a person managed to order goods worth more than € 200 and paid for it before January 1, 2020, then the new limit should not apply to it from a legal point of view, since the transaction took place back in 2019 ...
However, a representative of the online store Farfetch (sells goods of the "high" price segment) noted that all parcels ordered in 2019, but will be delivered in 2020, will be processed by customs under new rules: each parcel over € 200 will be subject to duty 15%, that is, the buyer may have to pay extra. As the representative of Farfetch explained, if the cost of the parcel exceeds the limit, then the customs representatives will contact the recipient to provide the documents, then he will pay the fee and after that the order will be transferred to the delivery service.
The representative of AliExpress Russia recalled that due to the fact that the site participates in the experiment of the FCS and "Mail", at the time of placing the order, the data is sent to the FCS. Therefore, if the order data arrives before the end of 2019, and the parcel arrives in Russia in 2020, then the customs rules of 2019 will be applied to it, that is, at a limit of € 500 per month, he said. "Users of AliExpress Russia can pay customs duty online - at the time of ordering with a value above the threshold, a window pops up with a link to the website of the authorized operator - Russian Post", - explained the representative of AliExpress Russia.
Not all Russian buyers liked the rules that came into force in the New Year. On the portal the Russian Public Initiative (ROI), a vote was launched to abolish the duty on international Internet purchases, the cost of which exceeds 200 euros. So far, only 1.2% of the votes have been collected, the deadline is April 21, 2020.
As the authors of the initiative explain, in 2019 there was a customs duty on purchases over 500 euros, in the amount of 30% of the excess amount. In 2020, a law came into force on changing the threshold of 200 euros and a duty of 15% for exceeding the payment of the amount. This duty is unfair in relation to the part of the population that benefits from this benefit for the following reasons:
In his comments in social networks Russian users also quite critically expressed regarding the reduction of the duty-free threshold, expressing the country's leadership claims:
Meanwhile, the authorities say, few ordinary buyers order truly expensive goods abroad. According to the Romir Research Center, the average order amount for Russians in online stores is 9146 rubles, or 117 euros. And most often they order affordable things that cost from 10 to 50 euros (780 - 3900 rubles). This was stated by 39 percent of the respondents. Orders for the amount of 50 to 100 euros were made 16 percent, from 100 to 200 euros - nine. Only five percent of buyers “reached” the upper limit of duty-free import of goods. It is they who will have to pay the duty from next year. “Most of the citizens making online purchases will not notice anything yet,” says the president of the research holding Romir Andrei Milekhin.
The duty-free threshold was lowered for reasons of equalization in the rights of trading platforms within the country, which pay VAT and therefore cannot sell their goods below a certain level, with foreign online stores. Some Russian entrepreneurs insist that the duty should be charged for the import of any goods from abroad. In their opinion, this is the only way domestic business can compete with electronic trading platforms from China and the United States. The Federal Customs Service is in favor of introducing a zero threshold for duty-free trade and reducing the size of duties to 20 percent, and the Ministry of Finance adheres to approximately the same position. But so far there are no specific bills on this matter.
According to NADT, the idea to lower the duty-free limit on purchases in foreign online stores is based on erroneous calculations. According to the organization, this will lead to an increase in budget expenditures and hit consumers and companies.
In early December, the media, citing the Ministry of Finance, reported on the ministry's initiative to reduce the threshold for duty-free import of goods from foreign online stores to € 100 from July 2020, to € 50 from 2021 and to € 20 from 2022.
To simplify the process of paying customs duties, back in January 2019, Russian Post and the FCS launched a pilot project to collect duties online so that the buyer can pay tax at the time of purchase. According to the plan announced by the partners, up to 90% of foreign online players should connect to the service. “This project made it possible to simplify and speed up customs clearance when goods arrived in Russia, and to transfer customs payments to a fast online format,” the postal operator assured, adding that so far the Joom and AliExpress marketplaces have connected to the system ...
The partners fulfilled the formally announced plan to connect 90% of the players: according to the Association of Internet Trade Companies (ACIT), 92% of all cross-border trade falls on parcels from China, where AliExpress and Joom are the main operators.
However, market participants believe that there will still be problems in connection with the innovation. The head of the National Association of Distance Selling (NADT), Alexander Ivanov, in an interview with RBC, recalled that if earlier the limit was calculated for the entire amount of purchases per month, now the threshold is € 200 per parcel. “This rule leads to significant administrative losses, since it is much more difficult to process each parcel separately. In all countries, the experiments on the collection of duties on the basis of the cost of one parcel were found to be unsuccessful. In the United States, for example, they tried to impose a tax on each parcel more expensive than $ 200, but it turned out that the costs of collecting this duty were higher than the tax collected. As a result, the threshold was raised to $ 800, ”Ivanov said.
Another interlocutor of RBC in the online trading market agrees with this. “The experiment of collecting duties through an authorized operator paid off in 2019. Nevertheless, an increase in the number of parcels subject to customs inspection can be expected, which may lead to an additional burden on the customs authorities,” he said.
According to Ivanov, if a person managed to order goods worth more than € 200 and paid for it before January 1, 2020, then the new limit should not apply to it from a legal point of view, since the transaction took place back in 2019 ...
However, a representative of the online store Farfetch (sells goods of the "high" price segment) noted that all parcels ordered in 2019, but will be delivered in 2020, will be processed by customs under new rules: each parcel over € 200 will be subject to duty 15%, that is, the buyer may have to pay extra. As the representative of Farfetch explained, if the cost of the parcel exceeds the limit, then the customs representatives will contact the recipient to provide the documents, then he will pay the fee and after that the order will be transferred to the delivery service.
The representative of AliExpress Russia recalled that due to the fact that the site participates in the experiment of the FCS and "Mail", at the time of placing the order, the data is sent to the FCS. Therefore, if the order data arrives before the end of 2019, and the parcel arrives in Russia in 2020, then the customs rules of 2019 will be applied to it, that is, at a limit of € 500 per month, he said. "Users of AliExpress Russia can pay customs duty online - at the time of ordering with a value above the threshold, a window pops up with a link to the website of the authorized operator - Russian Post", - explained the representative of AliExpress Russia.
Not all Russian buyers liked the rules that came into force in the New Year. On the portal the Russian Public Initiative (ROI), a vote was launched to abolish the duty on international Internet purchases, the cost of which exceeds 200 euros. So far, only 1.2% of the votes have been collected, the deadline is April 21, 2020.
As the authors of the initiative explain, in 2019 there was a customs duty on purchases over 500 euros, in the amount of 30% of the excess amount. In 2020, a law came into force on changing the threshold of 200 euros and a duty of 15% for exceeding the payment of the amount. This duty is unfair in relation to the part of the population that benefits from this benefit for the following reasons:
- The Russian industry cannot provide an assortment of goods presented on the trading floors of other countries.
- In the Russian Federation, there are no representatives of many manufacturers of narrow-profile products.
- In this regard, shadow schemes for bypassing the payment of these duties will appear, which will lead to losses in tax and duty fees.
- The tax burden for Russian citizens at this time is too high due to the introduction of 20% VAT, an increase in excise taxes on fuel (which leads to higher prices) and the lack of indexation of wages for the majority of working citizens.
In his comments in social networks Russian users also quite critically expressed regarding the reduction of the duty-free threshold, expressing the country's leadership claims:
Meanwhile, the authorities say, few ordinary buyers order truly expensive goods abroad. According to the Romir Research Center, the average order amount for Russians in online stores is 9146 rubles, or 117 euros. And most often they order affordable things that cost from 10 to 50 euros (780 - 3900 rubles). This was stated by 39 percent of the respondents. Orders for the amount of 50 to 100 euros were made 16 percent, from 100 to 200 euros - nine. Only five percent of buyers “reached” the upper limit of duty-free import of goods. It is they who will have to pay the duty from next year. “Most of the citizens making online purchases will not notice anything yet,” says the president of the research holding Romir Andrei Milekhin.
The duty-free threshold was lowered for reasons of equalization in the rights of trading platforms within the country, which pay VAT and therefore cannot sell their goods below a certain level, with foreign online stores. Some Russian entrepreneurs insist that the duty should be charged for the import of any goods from abroad. In their opinion, this is the only way domestic business can compete with electronic trading platforms from China and the United States. The Federal Customs Service is in favor of introducing a zero threshold for duty-free trade and reducing the size of duties to 20 percent, and the Ministry of Finance adheres to approximately the same position. But so far there are no specific bills on this matter.
According to NADT, the idea to lower the duty-free limit on purchases in foreign online stores is based on erroneous calculations. According to the organization, this will lead to an increase in budget expenditures and hit consumers and companies.
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