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Comment by bradwood | Hacker News Reader

Finally. The first _good_ reason for Brexit.

Don’t know about that. Brexit only created yet another tax/regulatory domain that companies have to negotiate.

There are so many different ones already that one more doesn't matter very much. If you are a poor country getting rid of them matters, but UK is rich/important enough that plenty of companies will find it worthwhile to navigate and so they don't loose much. Poor countries are a small market and so if it hard to navigate companies will give up as there are not enough rich people there to be worth the effort, and so banding together means your rich are combined with the rich in other poor countries and so it is more likely that you have enough that it is worth navigating the regulations.

Don't get me wrong, Brexit was a bad thing. My reply is strictly about things that are made by large companies outside of Europe. Skip any of those qualifiers and things change.

Ok but for large companies regulations are very rarely munch of an inconvenience anyway, with a very few exceptions (many of those are in fact EU regulations that actually benefit the consumer). They have the manpower to deal with it and often the pull to influence regulation.

Generally it’s individuals and small to medium sized companies both inside and outside the UK that are negatively affected by Brexit.

Because you really want to record movies longer than 30 minutes on your phone?

Not even sure if the UK has changed this already.

I really want technology to be as good as it gets, not as good as tax/tariff law allows.

The tax/tariff laws might dictate 30 minutes; however, in this case, it is also a practical limit for recording on your phone. Manufacturers need to set some boundaries in case someone is making a pocket recording that potentially could fill up the storage, drain the battery, and crash the device. If you want to record more than 30 minutes, you are better off buying recording equipment.

And what's the current UK import duty on camcorders?

Looks like 0% for all items under 8525 under the new Global Tariff (i.e for countries with which the UK trades under WTO terms). It would be 0% for countries with an FTA as well, of course:

https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/headings/8525

The distinction in law between sub-30 and 30+ minutes still exists, inherited from EU law, but the tariff is 0% in both cases:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/classifying-electrical-equipment...

Summary of the changes from the "Common External Tariff" of the EU to the "UK Global Tariff":

"The net effect of the tariff regime according to a summary by the Department for International Trade is as follows:

- 47% of products will be tariff-free, compared to 27% under the CET and

- Average tariffs will be reduced from 7.2% under the CET to 5.7% under the UKGT

This is achieved through changes to rates of tariff by lowering rates, reducing rates to zero or rounding rates down."

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