Import Tax Responsibilities from UK to USA FBA
Hello,
Currently I sell to the USA from the UK and would like to set up FBA in the USA to lower the costs of postage whilst speeding up delivery times.
What are the import tax rates on items I ship to Amazon FBA. Ususally the import tax bill goes to the customer, will Amazon forward this onto me through my account?
Thanks for the help!
4 replies
Seller_72Sy9T6sEfmjl
can not help too much with import tax but be aware that the moment you ship to FBA US you become liable for state sales tax. Each state has it’s own rate and if you have a physical presence in that state then any sales in the state are subject to paying tax.
You’ll need to keep a tight track of which FBA warehouse your stock is in and where it is being dispatched to so you can pay the relevant sales tax to the relevant state. I’m not sure if Amazon has a programme to automate this or if you want to do it yourself or hire in a US based tax manager to do it for you.
I looked at doing this but it’s a very complex situation, much more so than European VAT procedures.
Seller_2BrPSydGy6oyq
It’s correct that buyers from the USA are liable for import duties and local taxes if ordering from you on the UK site, but if you intend listing on the USA site, then that liability reverts to you, not the end customer, you would be liable for import duties for stock sold on the USA site, irrespective of where you hold the stock, or ship from, if sending stock to FBA in the US, then import duties/taxes would be your responsibility.
Seller_O21W1cDVYo8SQ
It varies. The US has no national VAT or sales tax, so there’s nothing along those lines. Your import tax responsibilities will be for duty only, and the rate of duty charged varies by type of goods. Look up the HTS code for what you’re sending, and you should be able to ascertain the import duty rate. These days those aren’t very high – some things are non-dutiable, others may have a tariff of a few percentage points. I think the highest rate I’ve ever paid for import to the US is about 3.5 percent.
I assume Amazon policies for shipping into the US are similar to those for shipping into the UK – if so, you must ship DDP (Delivered, Duty Paid) or Amazon will refuse the delivery. Amazon will not pay import taxes or allow itself to be named as the Importer of Record. I don’t know whether you need to register with the US as a non-resident importer of record, but would guess you probably do (I had to do this in the UK to be allowed to be named as an Importer of Record there).
Bear in mind that you will probably incur some other fees when importing to the US – customs brokerage fees and the like. This tends to mean that for international shipments it’s advantageous to make your shipments as large as reasonable, in order to spread the flat-fee portions of your cost out over more goods.
