GMK / Cherry doubleshot modifier packs (complete?)

[BimboBB]

Thanks for those. Do you have that as a template? Not to be unappreciative but I wouldn't mind doing the legends over with my Cherry ones so it looks much closer to what will be received.

We need to figure out something about the shipping situation. Having the order send from Germany will add 19% to the cost of the keycap because of vat fee. Is there another Europe country that have a good and cheap post but with none or at least less vat rate? Otherwise it might be better for you guys to have me ship everything from the US after all.

There seems to be a misunderstanding here.

When a German company sells in Germany, they always charge 19% VAT. When selling outside Germany, the VAT is deducted from the total price if (and only if) the buyer is a company with a valid EU VAT identification no.. In that case the buying company is obliged to pay (directly to the national tax office) the applicable national VAT.

Example: a German company selling e.g. a keyboard for 119€ will sell at that price to non-commercial buyers, no matter where they live: Germany, EU or rest of the world. They will also sell at that price to commercial buyers outside of the EU (Switzerland being a special case).

After some googling, this seems to be not correct and its like Ivan said: GMK wouldnt charge VAT if they ship to US, but if they ship to Germany/EU.

Best way would be to split the delivery.

[Jmneuv]

Yup, that's why i think if GMK ships the US portion directly they can/would do so without vat.

[Acanthophis]

And who's gonna split it? I doubt GMK will. And even if they do, they will want a fee for that.
If you decide to let your contact in Germany to sort and split, VAT will be mandatory for everything the contact recieves, so no change happened.

I don't understand why people just go and pay the 19%. People on GH tell me to fuck off if I complain about their procedure (not undervalueing on custom declaration) which results in me paying the VAT of 19%.
So why can't I tell them to fuck off, too? Why is it always anti-EU?

[fruktstund]

-The vat in Sweden is 25%.
-You can't count on customs to be sloppy (in some EU countries nothing gets through it seems)
- In theory it's against the rules to not pay vat when importing.

It could be sent back in one shipping to EU and then distributed in eu (even throw its dumb)

- I don't think I said anything about Swedish VAT?
- Sorry for that, I don't think I explained my thoughts properly. I meant it more like "if we're lucky we won't have to pay VAT, as opposed to surely having to pay VAT on everything".
- Yeah, it's somewhat (more or less?) illegal. That's why you have to pay a "straffavgift" to the customs.

And by the way, VAT and customs fees are two completely different matters.

They are, but if I'm thinking correctly it's the customs people who handle the VAT by saying "hey you, you haven't paid your VAT for this; please do so", so they do have a bit of a connection!
By the way, about Americans having to pay VAT, is there any kind of source for this? I've always thought they do have to pay the VAT (mainly because I've had to pay Japanese VAT, and Swedish VAT also, when ordering stuff from Japan before, as an example), but before I wrote my last post I did a quick search on the Internet and read that you don't have to pay the VAT as an American ordering from the EU. I guess this is why you shouldn't trust the Internet (after a single search and clicking on a single search result).

(...) Only to commercial buyers in the EU will they sell at 100€ (i.e. after deduction of the 19% VAT included in the total price), but then the buyer has to declare the goods in his country and pay his national VAT (ranging from 15% in Luxemburg to 27% in Hungary).

I think this is going off-topic a bit, but this is actually wrong. You do have to declare the goods in your country, but you don't have to pay your national VAT. I've done this on my company, and I know others who've done the same, and I've even talked to people at the tax office about it. I'd guess this is because companies "never pay VAT" (or well, they do pay VAT, but they get it back later).

So... It seems the best choice is to ship it from Europe after all!

[Jmneuv]

Why wouldn't GMK split the shipment? I guess they'd be asking a fee but that shouldn't be a problem.

[fruktstund]

After some googling, this seems to be not correct and its like Ivan said: GMK wouldnt charge VAT if they ship to US, but if they ship to Germany/EU.

Wait, so it is like this after all? I'm starting to get confused now.

[Acanthophis]

Just let Ivan sort it out, discussing it won't bring us any further.
Although I have to admit, I expected Ivan would have known about this beforehand.
(Or rather, who's that German contact who didn't think of that at all, and if he did, why didn't he tell Ivan?)

[kbdfr]

Sorry guys, but VAT treatment is definitely like I said.

Being self-employed (i.e. a commercial seller for tax matters) in Germany, I have to charge German VAT when dealing with any other customers than non-German EU companies, which I quite often do.
And when buying (for my business) anything from non-German EU companies (which I occasionaly do), they deduct their national VAT from the price and I have to declare (and pay) the German VAT rate. Of course I can skip that and hope nobody will notice, but that's tax evasion and at least in the EU, national tax offices nowadays exchange their data.

Edit: Just checked. I was wrong. No VAT for non-EU companies, but they will have to pay their national VAT all the same.

[IvanIvanovich]

We do not have VAT in USA. There is no such thing. In USA we have sales tax, which only has to be paid if you buy something in person at a physical store, or in some case online if the company you are buying from is located in your same state.
I do not have to pay any VAT what so ever if I pay from my US account and the shipment is delivered to USA. I thought it would be cheaper and easier to have it shipped from Germany, but I did not know all about this VAT stuff as I never have had to deal with this topic so excuse my ignorance.

Example, average order is 1 white purple $41 , 1 cmyk $33, 2 esc $8 = $90 * 19% vat 107 + $4.50 shipping total $111.50.
Average cost to ship that international with USPS is $10 via first class with no tracking so instead $90 + 10 = $100. Add tracking for international is another $12.
So, if I fill the customs as gift, value $30 for example you would save a little money, or with tracking just a little more. If anyone has an issue with me fudging the customs form, I also would have no problem marking the full value for you.

[Jmneuv]

Do you think a split shipment by GMK would be possible?

[IvanIvanovich]

They will only spit it 50/50 exactly, which I don't think will suit our purposes. I could certainly still ship all the European orders at once to save some shipping overall and have it redistributed if that is preferred.

[Jmneuv]

That starts to sound like the best option.
(pm inc)

[fruktstund]

@kbdfr: yeah, what you're saying is true after all. For us Swedes, we have to declare 25% VAT on items bought from the EU ("invoiced VAT"), but since the VAT is tax deductible we're able to declare it as "deductible VAT" in our tax declaration. Virtually this means we aren't paying anything, as opposed to if we buy something from a Swedish seller (then we pay their VAT and get it back from the tax authority).
Funny how I find my English skills insufficient for trying to explain what the hell I mean when it comes to economy. Or well, I'm bad at explaining my thoughts in Swedish too, so yeah.

@lysol: with "ship all the European orders at once", do you mean "ship everything to the German guy who will then send it out to all other EU people"? If this is the case we'd certainly have to pay VAT and customs fees anyway, since I don't like the idea of declaring thousands of euros worth of keycaps as $30.
There would also be another problem with declaring a value too low on the package: you won't have sufficient insurance if the package gets lost.
But either we do it like that, or you Americans will also have to pay the VAT.

Currently it sounds like the best thing would've been to have GMK split the shipment, but that doesn't seem to work either... Can't we have a forum member do some kind of internship at GMK otherwise?

[Acanthophis]

I completely understand people want to dodge the 19% VAT.

The prices on the order form, what about them? Do they include the VAT? Are those the prices GMK gave you for a US address? Or are those the prices for the contact? Because, if you told GMK the keycaps should be shipped to a German address, GMK has to bake the 19% VAT into the price (in Germany all prices in retail/shopping already include VAT), that's German law.

[IvanIvanovich]

The item prices listed in OP are without VAT. No matter how it gets shipped and from where you guys will only pay your VAT once.

If the majority want to have all the orders sent and then redistributed then of course I will mark the correct value for insurance reasons so in this case you will have to pay your taxes. Individuals making the choice for undervalue on their own order if send individual is on them.
I am simply trying to find the best solution without making anything cost more than is necessary.

[Acanthophis]

Well, no.
If you'll receive the keycaps and send them individually to everyone in undervalue, actually there is no VAT to pay.
But much more risks because of so much shipping around the globe.

[Jmneuv]

I think it's becoming apparent that the big parcel from GMK goes to US first.

[7bit]

In order to decide, you need the following figures:

Order total to determine VAT.
Potential US import tax.
Shipping costs of the whole package to DE and US.
Shipping costs of individual orders from DE and US to worldwide destinations.

Someone who has got a lot of Cherry key caps should test how many key caps can be shipped for the various shipping tariffs.

Take into account that if you don't do it yourself, someone else might not understand which keys belong to which kits, so there might be more errors which cost more money. This point was the main reason why I decided to do it here instead of letting someone do it in the US.

[tlt]

The best thing would be to ship to someone that has a company in Germany (as they have low vat and cheap shipping) and export the US kits from there (You get back the VAT for expenses when you export). But there is paperwork for the receiver company and I don't know how long it takes to get back the VAT.

[kbdfr]

@kbdfr: yeah, what you're saying is true after all. For us Swedes, we have to declare 25% VAT on items bought from the EU ("invoiced VAT"), but since the VAT is tax deductible we're able to declare it as "deductible VAT" in our tax declaration. Virtually this means we aren't paying anything, as opposed to if we buy something from a Swedish seller (then we pay their VAT and get it back from the tax authority).

VAT is tax deductible only for businesses (at least in Germany, I don't think it will be otherwise elsewhere since it would mean that VAT is always reimbursed, which would make it completely pointless). As it is, every business in the production/distribution process pays VAT it has perceived and is reimbursed VAT it has paid. Only the private customer at the end of the chain pays VAT without being reimbursed. VAT is a consumption tax.

@lysol: with "ship all the European orders at once", do you mean "ship everything to the German guy who will then send it out to all other EU people"? If this is the case we'd certainly have to pay VAT and customs fees anyway, since I don't like the idea of declaring thousands of euros worth of keycaps as $30.

No customs fees are applicable between EU countries. This "common market" was one of the main reasons for the creation of the European Community (later renamed European Union).

[kbdfr]

In order to decide, you need the following figures:

Order total to determine VAT.
Potential US import tax.
Shipping costs of the whole package to DE and US.
Shipping costs of individual orders from DE and US to worldwide destinations.

Someone who has got a lot of Cherry key caps should test how many key caps can be shipped for the various shipping tariffs.

Take into account that if you don't do it yourself, someone else might not understand which keys belong to which kits, so there might be more errors which cost more money. This point was the main reason why I decided to do it here instead of letting someone do it in the US.

Now that's a precise analysis.

[7bit]

<---7bit

The cheapest way for sure would be to wait until they ship. Then rob out the transporter where the packages are in.


Because the packages are insured, we will get back all the money and have the key caps with a lot of other stuff from the robbery....

[Acanthophis]

I like the criminal energy!
How about blasting off the ground above an abandoned U-Bahn tube so the transporter falls through? Knock out the guards (postmen ) with something not health damaging (gas) and rob that shit out of that truck!
Like in the movie The Italian Job.

I have the feeling the cost involved in the robbery is quite equal to the cost of the keycaps

[IvanIvanovich]

Don't be silly. Obviously we should just go and take over the factory if we are going to engage in criminal enterprise.

[fruktstund]

@kbdfr: yeah, what you're saying is true after all. For us Swedes, we have to declare 25% VAT on items bought from the EU ("invoiced VAT"), but since the VAT is tax deductible we're able to declare it as "deductible VAT" in our tax declaration. Virtually this means we aren't paying anything, as opposed to if we buy something from a Swedish seller (then we pay their VAT and get it back from the tax authority).

VAT is tax deductible only for businesses (at least in Germany, I don't think it will be otherwise elsewhere since it would mean that VAT is always reimbursed, which would make it completely pointless). As it is, every business in the production/distribution process pays VAT it has perceived and is reimbursed VAT it has paid. Only the private customer at the end of the chain pays VAT without being reimbursed. VAT is a consumption tax.

@lysol: with "ship all the European orders at once", do you mean "ship everything to the German guy who will then send it out to all other EU people"? If this is the case we'd certainly have to pay VAT and customs fees anyway, since I don't like the idea of declaring thousands of euros worth of keycaps as $30.

No customs fees are applicable between EU countries. This "common market" was one of the main reasons for the creation of the European Community (later renamed European Union).

Yeah, VAT is tax deductible for businesses (and only businesses - what would be the point otherwise?) in all of Europe, I'd guess.

What I meant was if lysol were to ship all European orders from the US to our German proxy we'd have to pay both VAT and customs fees.

Don't be silly. Obviously we should just go and take over the factory if we are going to engage in criminal enterprise.

We'll just have to make sure to keep the employees in the factory. I for one don't know the slightest about molding keycaps, so we'd definitely have to shut and lock the doors tightly!

[mintberryminuscrunch]

...
What I meant was if lysol were to ship all European orders from the US to our German proxy we'd have to pay both VAT and customs fees....

What customs fees?

[fruktstund]

...
What I meant was if lysol were to ship all European orders from the US to our German proxy we'd have to pay both VAT and customs fees....

What customs fees?

Depends on what country the receiver is in, I believe. Here in Sweden it's a percentage of the total worth of the items (depending on what kind of items there are in the package), plus a sort of penalty fee if you don't declare this beforehand.

[webwit]

I have a dedicated server in Texas, USA and recently they wrote me this:

As a non-E.U. supplier of web-hosting services to customers in
the European Union (E.U.), we are required to comply with the
European VAT (Value Added Tax) regulations by charging VAT to
customers located in the E.U.

Customers categorized as Business users in the E.U. may be
required to self account for VAT on our charges under EC
Directive 2006/112, Art 196 using the reverse charge mechanism.*
In order for us to determine whether you fall into this
category, and not charge VAT, we need to collect some
information from you.

If we determine that we are required to collect VAT from you,
the VAT rate will be your E.U. member state's VAT rate at the
date of invoice. The VAT charge will be itemized separately on
your invoices and billing information.

Since it's a business server it doesn't affect me.

But it's a dangerous idea from the EU. The idea is that if you consume an Internet service outside the EU while you are in the EU, you have to pay VAT.

[7bit]

Yeah right!

Ship all to mintberry, he usually does not have to pay anything.

[tlt]

I'm paying Swedish VAT on Steam games but some fake there address to get around it.