My six pennyworth on the subject. Over £18 and you'll get done on the vat. Over £135 and you'll get done on import tax first and there are different scales of that according to what you're importing. If the exporter puts the correct code or description then you'll get done at 3% and then the VAT at 20% on the cost of the goods and the cost of the import tax. Lovely people these stupid revenue idiots. We just love financing a low life cost centre that is trying to drive all uk enterprise into the ground by ever increasing tax revenues so they can waste it frivously on some trade visit freebie to somewhere exotic that doesn't need a trade visit. And you're quite right on top of that the Royal Mail will clobber you all for the privilidge of paying the dear HMRC on your behalf, around £8-10 unless it has gone up.
Concur on the TB method, I have been doing exactly the same since I got a series of bills amounting to £600 all back dated from TNT. Suggest that we might want to be slightly careful of what we post on an open forum about this sort of thing as we might shoot ourselves in the foot?
