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dadude77

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 28, 2009
24
0
If i was to ship a phone to europe, would I have to pay a tax or something upon arrival? if so any idea how much it would be?
 
It depends where in Europe, which is a big place, made of many different countries. Generally the tax will be the same amount of tax you would have paid had you bought in that country; this, plus the shipping, would usually make it more expensive. If your package doesn't get checked, you might get away with it, but it's probably illegal.

Another thing to bear in mind, in the USA, you can only get an unlocked iPhone direct from Apple, and Apple US will only ship to a US address. There are remailer companies which provide a proxy address, and charge a small fortune for it.
 
its to belgium, had been looking but hadn't found a good place to look, but I don't know exactly what taxes etc apply.

On ups or fedex if you put it as declarable, and the value, the price that pops up, does that include the customs/vat tax?
 
I looked, and found this: http://www.dutycalculator.com/new-import-duty-and-tax-calculation/ which allows you to calculate import taxes for all kinds of things. The important numbers are here:

Notes on duty & taxes rates
Iphone has an import duty rate of 3.7% and VAT rate of 21% .

I ran the numbers for you. A 649 dollar unlocked iPhone 4s 16Gb would cost 639 Euros after tax, not including shipping. You can buy the exact same phone in Belguim for 649 Euros. So, unless you can get transatlantic shipping for less than 10 Euros, it simply isn't worth it.
 
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