Did anyone work with a 3rd party service that can offer advise around EU->UK shipping & financials specifically? I am based in Belgium and send inventory to Amazon’s Germany and UK fulfilment centres.

I have a UK VAT / EORI registration (through Amazon Avalara services)

I only send approx. 4 times / year to Amazon’s UK FC . I used DPD in the past and this went flawlessly. I just paid the shipping costs (chose Incoterm DAP DP) and in less than a week the shipment arrived and I got no questions asked at all. No VAT etc to be paid, as Amazon UK collects that upon purchase and hands over to HRMC VAT.

Due to a DPD system glitch and some urgency back in August, I ended up using UPS to send new inventory to Amazon UK.

This was a horrible experience. My shipment was sort of stuck for a month in the UK and I was unable to get any updates. Then about 3 weeks later I got an invitation from UPS to pay almost 800 GBP in government charges (value shipment was about 4400 Euro, HS Tariff 85235910, Country of origin China).

I’ve tried multiple time to get in touch with UPS UK imports via mail/phone, but getting no answer.

The only things I’d like to know are;

What are these ‘government charges’ about? The brokerage charges where 18.80 GBP , I understand. I assume the government charges are import fees, but where do these rates comes from? (I’ve never had to pay those with DPD before the summer). This is about 20% which seems extremely high, where / how can I check this is correct.

How can I get an invoice of my payment (just have a print screens of my ‘receipt’).

If I would be able to get an invoice from UPS, which company registration would I choose? My ‘default’ Belgian one? Or my UK one (the one Avalara set up for my VAT obligations).

Where would I be able to add these import costs as an expense, i.e. deduct in my income statement. I assume the Belgian one as I pay taxes here and not in UK.

Brexit ….