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Comment by ReptileMan | Hacker News Reader

In Europe I am forced to pay 20-sh percent VAT on shipping + cost of goods when importing and eventually above 150 eur a small customs duty.

The US Deminimis seemed quite generous. No wonder it is removed.

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But you pay the same tax on domestic goods, it's just included in the price you see.

I know that you obviously know this, so it's a weird thing to mention in context of (additional) taxing of foreign goods.

Yes but when you import from countries that don't have VAT is different than countries that have VAT. When you import something from the UK (have vat) what you pay is much closer to the list price of the item than the US.

The interesting thing is that at least my shipments from Aliexpress to the EU were always invoiced at $3-5 no matter how much I actually paid for them, circumventing the need to pay tax and duty on packages. I wonder if they’ll do the same now for the US, because my last packages (to the US) were delivered in February and were invoiced at the correct amount (though they were not above the de minimis amount)

This has been a widespread phenomenon in the US since forever in the private shipper space. "Mark as gift" "value is $5".

The issue of course is that it's fraudulent. It remains to be seen how closely the US is going to be enforcing it. I have a feeling Chinese shippers will be under the most scrutiny.

They can ship it from EU or Mexico or what have you. This type of warehouse and forwarding service is very widespread.

Generous is a strange choice of word - it's like implying the government is entitled to its own citizens' money, and we should consider ourselves lucky that they weren't taking as much of it.

I mean in the US constitution it is explicitly stated that interstate commerce is under the USG hat. So yes the government is entitled to it's citizens money when they cross the border.

VAT is just a sales tax. Here in WA we pay ~10%.

the point of the de minimis exemption was that you didn't pay the equivalent of the sales tax on imported items valued less than $800. as a result the imported item could be up to $80 cheaper than the same item bought locally.

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