I’m opening a new office in Taichung and making a big sales drive next month so I need to have a large number of samples sent over from our EU factory.
I can’t really get a straight answer from anyone on whether these are going to be zero rated. They are vinyl records with sleeves pre-printed in Chinese with the words ‘free sample’ in huge characters. Am I going to have any issue shipping a few thousand of these things in?
I was on the DHL site looking for something else and I found this:
“If it is a non-commercial shipment (non-business purpose), such as a personal gift, sample or faulty part, you will need a proforma or non-business use invoice.”
Any idea what a proforma or non-business use invoice is ? Don’t know if that’s relevant to Taiwan either. Or if thousands count as a sample.
Couldn’t you just claim back the VAT ? Most things don’t have an import duty, just VAT.
[quote=“Big Fluffy Matthew”]I was on the DHL site looking for something else and I found this:
“If it is a non-commercial shipment (non-business purpose), such as a personal gift, sample or faulty part, you will need a proforma or non-business use invoice.”
Any idea what a proforma or non-business use invoice is ? Don’t know if that’s relevant to Taiwan either. Or if thousands count as a sample.
Couldn’t you just claim back the VAT ? Most things don’t have an import duty, just VAT.[/quote]
In the export/import world, a pro-forma invoice is an advance copy of the final invoice. It is usually requested by the buyer so that they can request for funds (either from their finance department or Letter of Credit from the banks) in advance for payment to the seller. Strange that DHL request for a pro-forma invoice for shipment of non-commercial items…
Anyway, just to clarify - a pro-forma invoice is NOT a non-business invoice.
I am guessing you want to ship something personal and have been requested by DHL to make an invoice. You can just create it in any format you like (typically in a table format) listing clearly the items; description, quantity and value of each item. Remember to date it and sign it. Why DHL (or any express company for the matter) requests this is because they need to put a value on the items shipped for a few reasons:
Llary - As for whether vinyl records constitute as dutiable items in TW, your best bet is to make a general enquiry with any international freight forwarder in TW (DHL, FedEx, UPS, TNT, Kuehne & Nagel, Panalpina, Schenker, Maersk Logistics; take your pick). Tell them that you want to ship 2,000 vinyl records from Origin X to TW and ask them to give you a quote with a clear breakdown of the import duties, customs, VAT, insurance, whatever… If you didn’t get a straight answer from them, then I’m not sure whether a government official at the customs office would be able to assist you… Hope this helps you.
Well, I have my samples but it took two days and a couple of burst blood vessels to retrieve them from the clutches of Taiwan Customs.
set off from Taichung in the early morning and spend two hours at an airport freight office trying to find someone who knows how to use a computer to tell me which building my AWB is registered at
get some stamps from Eva Air and drive over to the Customs building
meet a fierce customs woman who tells me to go downstairs for help filling out forms because they are ‘too busy’ to deal with this trifling enquiry
the downstairs people are pretty friendly and talk me through the forms. Start getting a bit annoyed when they keep telling my gf to write stuff out or talk to people even though she knows nothing about my business and I read & write Chinese just as quickly
go back upstairs where they tell me my business name does not match the air waybill name (English Name ltd. vs English Name t/a Trading Name) and that I will have to go back to Eva Air
drive back to Eva Air where they tell me they can’t do anything
get back to Customs where they tell me the problem is now that I don’t have an import license and can’t use my company name or tong yi bian hao. Woman laughs in my face as she tells me this, then turns her back and refuses to speak to me any more.
have a brainwave and get someone in the factory to get someone at the original airline to change the AWB details to my personal name. Eva Air are surprisingly helpful and get the documents changed in double quick time.
go back to Customs AGAIN. By this time it’s about 3:30pm and I see most of the staff reading newspapers, eating snacks or in one case singing to three female staff (lunch is 12:30pm to 1pm, closing time is 5pm). Pay the NT$200 statutory filing tax, get my documents stamped and wait to be told whether my goods will need inspection.
my good will need inspection. Even though it’s still only 4pm I’m told to come back tomorrow because they are ‘too busy’ to check my goods before closing time. I politely point out that they don’t seem all that busy and I’ve driven 3 1/2 hours from a mountain in Taichung and would really really appreciate them not making me have to drive all the way back tomorrow.
5pm arrives and we are still arguing. I do not get my goods. I get in my car and punch the stereo which breaks all the tuning buttons and forces me to listen to IRCT at high volume. I see an enormous labradour humping some guy’s leg which cheers me up. My gf’s friend offers to put us up for the night in Taoyuan.
get back to customs at 9am, they check my goods and sign everything off. Woohoo, so I can collect my stuff then? Nope, since I changed the AWB to a personal receipient I have to pay 5% sales tax. FOB. Which means I have to pay 5% I shouldn’t even have to pay anyway on the entire invoice value including shipping, service charges, insurance etc. Llary is not happy and argues for an hour while some dickface from UPS keeps butting in and saying I should shut up and accept Taiwan is the best country in the world and this is how we do things here. My girlfriend tells him to shut up and calls him an ugly fuck which cheers me up again.
go downstairs, pay the tax, come back upstairs and spend an hour while some young guy asks me how to spell out every single line on the form. Instead of just doing this all in one go he goes to his computer, comes back to ask about one line, goes back to the computer and so on ad nauseum.
get even more stamps from another guy and now some important-looking guy tells me that we have a copyright issue with my goods. Since the shipment is registered as ‘music recordings’ and I had to change the recipient name to my personal name, they can’t accept that 500 copies of the same recording is a legal shipment. Get to about 4pm and my arse is starting to go thinking that I’ll have to spend another fucking night in Airporthicksville but amazingly he gets tired of it all and just stamps the bloody form. My gf makes me realise how much I love her by proceeding to chew out the entire custom’s office for a full hour. Her friend arrives half way through to give back up and films an employee fast asleep on a lounge recliner with the Apple Daily over his face.
summary: the Taiwanese customs system is set up to keep the bao guan agent companies on the gravy train. If you cough up for an agent you get no goods inspection, no warehousing fees etc. etc. If you want to do it yourself then Customs will make it as difficult as possible because they don’t like people coming in with pesky stuff that makes them have to work instead of just stamping a load of forms then spending the rest of the day sleeping/eating/singing. I will still carry on doing it myself in future because I’m a stubborn fool who wants to piss the bastards off.
Have you thought about moving to New Zealand?
The obvious problem here is that you forgot the hongbaos. Our company has been through similar stuff many times, but hongbaos really speed up the stuff.
By the way, you are also least likely to get any duties are inspections if you send it by post rather than courier. If you do go by courier, have them do the customs legwork. You pay a bit more but no insane hassles.
The forwarder lied to me in an attempt to get me to not persue collecting my package, pontificated and obstructed for weeks. In the end, it turned out the forwarder in the UK had incorrectly filled out the customs form and accepted the blame. Still, that was insufficient to convince customs that we were not trying to smuggle goods into Taiwan, but instead of the box being returned to the sender, I was informed by the forwarder that the contents were “destroyed”…a case of beer!
Taiwan! Naruwan! Double happy happy green silicon valley ASIA OPERATIONS HUB! NARUWAN!!! Love Hello Kitty POWER!!!
I bet the whole customs crew pitched in to ‘destroy’ it.