Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I’m with ced on this will push me to paint more of what I have and worry about missing out on stuff less.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned 3d printing yet. I was already spending 30-40% of my hobby money on 3d printed miniatures, this likely pushes it higher. I’ve gotten some really excellent 3d printed resin stuff off Etsy. All manufactured here in the USA. I think the 3d sculpting/patreon ecosystem has some of the best miniature designers and sculptors in the world. I like a lot of the indie stuff a ton more than GW designs.

Check out Reptilian Overlords for example. Top notch.

I'm of the mindset that I need to grab some of the more boutique, foreign manufacturers now before this hits like a ton of bricks.

I just put in my order for Dunkledorf in Denmark before it becomes way too prohibitively expensive to do so.

 ced1106 wrote:

Billicus wrote:
Is the comparison to VAT anything other than off topic copium? You have sales tax in the US already.

No. When CMON started charging VAT to backers, internationals were VERY upset, similar to how us yanks are reacting to tariffs.

What other taxes do internationals pay? We also have state tax in the USA, and sometimes shipping fees are an explicit additional cost, though not as often as the mail catalog days.

Should also mention, though, that, from 2020 to 2024, we had some serious inflation b/c of shipping instability, govt spending, sudden increase in rates after midterm elections, etc. What cost $4 in the USA in 2020 cost $5 in 2024. And that affected EVERYTHING. Despite the publicity over tariffs, in the USA, the majority of spending is in the service industry, which has no tariff, "just" inflation.

Inflation was a global thing. We all had it.

Buying from the UK in the US you should not be charged VAT.

Buying directly from the US we have VAT applied in the same way as anything being sold internally.

VAT is not the same as a tariff.

Vorian wrote:

 ced1106 wrote:

Billicus wrote:
Is the comparison to VAT anything other than off topic copium? You have sales tax in the US already.

No. When CMON started charging VAT to backers, internationals were VERY upset, similar to how us yanks are reacting to tariffs.

What other taxes do internationals pay? We also have state tax in the USA, and sometimes shipping fees are an explicit additional cost, though not as often as the mail catalog days.

Should also mention, though, that, from 2020 to 2024, we had some serious inflation b/c of shipping instability, govt spending, sudden increase in rates after midterm elections, etc. What cost $4 in the USA in 2020 cost $5 in 2024. And that affected EVERYTHING. Despite the publicity over tariffs, in the USA, the majority of spending is in the service industry, which has no tariff, "just" inflation.

Inflation was a global thing. We all had it.

Buying from the UK in the US you should not be charged VAT.

Buying directly from the US we have VAT applied in the same way as anything being sold internally.

VAT is not the same as a tariff.

No, but we often are charged "VAT" by the company not taking that VAT out of the final price we pay online. Then there is the 25% of the "order value" shipping, where I could buy a 1oz something, which costs $50, but I get charged shipping on the price, not the actual cost of shipping. And let's not talk about the practice of "valuing" GBP higher than the actual conversion cost to USD, and THEN charging me my State's sales tax on top, and then shipping (inflated cost + VAT + US sales tax + 25% cost shipping). Yeah, you'll have to excuse my bitterness at being raked over the coals repeatedly buying stuff from the UK.

Still, that won't stop me from doing so again, sadly. Except this time it'll be before the 27th of August, and then never until this stupidity ends.

Many places in the US have a city sales tax too.

Billicus wrote:
So in the US you don't pay sales tax if you buy something from overseas and have it shipped to you? Huh, TIL. Way to encourage people to buy from overseas!

I only buy overseas via crowdfunding and have been hit with taxes *all* the time. Never clear what taxes I'm paying, of course.

Sucks but hey, not much you can do about it(without getting into discussing verboten topics).

I do wonder, how effective are your import controls over there? In theory we in the UK have had to pay import duties on all purchases over 20 quid for ages, but in practice since you're supposed to self-declare to the tax man unless your parcel is really valuable, gets stopped for inspection at Customs, or travels via specific fast courier services that auto-declare - in which case they make you pay before they'll send you the parcel, and again for the postage for the letter demanding you pay, and then again as a "handling fee" for so helpfully sending you the demand - a lot of stuff just kind of slips through without getting charged(I've literally never met anyone who buys personal stuff from abroad ie not importing for their business who actually bothers to declare the 2 quid or whatever they owe to HMRC come the end of the tax year; most won't even remember). So yeah if they're as lax about it as our guys you'll probably get stung for normal hobby-size purchases maybe 1 out of every 3 or 4, but if they take it seriously it'll be a real bugger no doubt.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
From reuters

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-ends-tariff-exemption-all-low-value-packages-2025-07-30/

previously packages valued at or under $800 entered the USA tariff free under the "de minimis" exemption

this had previously been abolished for packages from China and Hong Kong, but still existed for stuff coming in from the rest of the world

Now it's being abolished for packages coming in from anywhere outside the USA, Reuters reports from 27th August 'Goods shipped through the postal system will face one of two tariffs: either an "ad valorem duty" equal to the effective tariff rate of the package's country of origin or, for six months, a specific tariff of $80 to $200 depending on the country of origin's tariff rate.

so it looks like gamers will need to find another 10% for UK imports, and 15% for those from the EU. Not nearly as bad as it could have been if the trade deals hadn't been signed, but still something to be aware of if you do still shop from overseas sellers

Whelp. That's going to mean a price increase on my store. :( I hate this timeline.

 ced1106 wrote:
Well, I just poked around at how much VAT countries charge, so it looks like USA is catching up in the taxation business.

VAT is dependent on the importing country. I'd appreciate knowing from the internationals how they've adapted to VAT, especially when KS creators (eg. CMON) enforced it.

Are internationals going to tell us yanks to suck it up b/c they've been paying VAT all these years already?

Guess it's time to actually paint my miniatures and play my games, instead of buying them.

As others have pointed out, VAT is the equivalent of sales tax in how it's levied and charged; it is not comparable to tariffs. Further, in regards to tariffs, most if not all the countries listed in your table do still apply the de minimis exemption for whatever import duties, tariffs or fees they have, so the observation that "it looks like USA is catching up in the taxation business" is wide of the mark. I don't know how the final costs to consumers compare – it might be that they end up not all that different; I really don't know – but the US approach of the widespread application of significant tariffs, and abolishing de minimis is definitely an outlier among developed nations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 Snord wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 frankelee wrote:
Still nice that it's a tariff and not VAT. Assuming of course the company you're buying from is honest about the cost 😆

Er... why? Either one is paid by the importer.

It works differently though. VAT is really a consumption tax, while a tarriff is an import tax. VAT is automatically passed on to the consumer, while it's up to the importer who bears the tarriff. That's my understanding anyway.

Works the same. Companies could just not ask for the sales tax and just eat it too.

Difference is that in the US (different to many other countries), sales tax is often labled separately on receipts in a way to signal to consumers which part of the final price is which, but no reason you couldn't do the same with tariffs or any other kind of tax, if you cared (or stop doing it for VAT/sales tax and just charge whatever the final price is).

No, they can't – at least not in the UK. Businesses above certain size are obliged to be registered for and charge VAT. They could notionally "eat it" by adjusting their base prices overall, but what price is charged must include VAT, ultimately payable by the seller to the tax authorities. As others have noted, in the UK, we already do what you're suggesting and "just charge whatever the final price is" – but it doesn't mean the consumer can somehow be magically spared the effective cost of the VAT.

 ced1106 wrote:

Billicus wrote:
So in the US you don't pay sales tax if you buy something from overseas and have it shipped to you? Huh, TIL. Way to encourage people to buy from overseas!

I only buy overseas via crowdfunding and have been hit with taxes *all* the time. Never clear what taxes I'm paying, of course.

That's because the crowdfunding platform is required to collect sales taxes because they're purposfully targeting americans (gamefound) or US based (kickstarter for example)-- it doesn't matter who's running the crowdfunder as they're not collecting the money the website is. If you buy directly from a UK or EU company that doesn't try to have a US presence/store front they won't collect US state sales tax but you might end up paying VAT tax (some go thorugh the hassle of setting up their store to not charge VATs to addresses outside of their country/Economic Block) -- but you can go through the process of getting that refunded if you are.

 YodhrinsForge wrote:
Sucks but hey, not much you can do about it(without getting into discussing verboten topics).

I do wonder, how effective are your import controls over there? In theory we in the UK have had to pay import duties on all purchases over 20 quid for ages, but in practice since you're supposed to self-declare to the tax man unless your parcel is really valuable, gets stopped for inspection at Customs, or travels via specific fast courier services that auto-declare - in which case they make you pay before they'll send you the parcel, and again for the postage for the letter demanding you pay, and then again as a "handling fee" for so helpfully sending you the demand - a lot of stuff just kind of slips through without getting charged(I've literally never met anyone who buys personal stuff from abroad ie not importing for their business who actually bothers to declare the 2 quid or whatever they owe to HMRC come the end of the tax year; most won't even remember). So yeah if they're as lax about it as our guys you'll probably get stung for normal hobby-size purchases maybe 1 out of every 3 or 4, but if they take it seriously it'll be a real bugger no doubt.

The de minimis threshold for imports to the UK is £135, not £20. It's also not the case that you're supposed to self-declare; the exporter is supposed to complete a customs declaration, and that information is assessed for VAT and any other duties. Plenty slips through, sure, from people downplaying the value of the shipment on the customs declaration, but that's slightly different.

self declaring is when you travel outside your country and then are expected to, upon return, tell customs if you're bringing back any item over a certain value or amounts of cash you didn't have before to then pay taxes on.

Greenfield wrote:

 YodhrinsForge wrote:
Sucks but hey, not much you can do about it(without getting into discussing verboten topics).

I do wonder, how effective are your import controls over there? In theory we in the UK have had to pay import duties on all purchases over 20 quid for ages, but in practice since you're supposed to self-declare to the tax man unless your parcel is really valuable, gets stopped for inspection at Customs, or travels via specific fast courier services that auto-declare - in which case they make you pay before they'll send you the parcel, and again for the postage for the letter demanding you pay, and then again as a "handling fee" for so helpfully sending you the demand - a lot of stuff just kind of slips through without getting charged(I've literally never met anyone who buys personal stuff from abroad ie not importing for their business who actually bothers to declare the 2 quid or whatever they owe to HMRC come the end of the tax year; most won't even remember). So yeah if they're as lax about it as our guys you'll probably get stung for normal hobby-size purchases maybe 1 out of every 3 or 4, but if they take it seriously it'll be a real bugger no doubt.

The de minimis threshold for imports to the UK is £135, not £20. It's also not the case that you're supposed to self-declare; the exporter is supposed to complete a customs declaration, and that information is assessed for VAT and any other duties. Plenty slips through, sure, from people downplaying the value of the shipment on the customs declaration, but that's slightly different.

Oh, was I thinking of the VAT threshold then?

 Monkeysloth wrote:
self declaring is when you travel outside your country and then are expected to, upon return, tell customs if you're bringing back any item over a certain value or amounts of cash you didn't have before to then pay taxes on.

I wasn't using a technical term man, I just meant that if you have knowledge that there's a tax you were supposed to pay and circumstances meant you didn't pay it, you're supposed to complete a Self Assessment Tax Return(most people don't need to do that here, your taxes just get automatically deducted from your wages/salary unless you're self-employed or running some "tax efficient" scam as a "business owner") at the end of the financial year and report what you owe to HMRC.

 YodhrinsForge wrote:

Greenfield wrote:


The de minimis threshold for imports to the UK is £135, not £20. It's also not the case that you're supposed to self-declare; the exporter is supposed to complete a customs declaration, and that information is assessed for VAT and any other duties. Plenty slips through, sure, from people downplaying the value of the shipment on the customs declaration, but that's slightly different.

Oh, was I thinking of the VAT threshold then?

No. They're essentially the same. £135 is the threshold at which any import will be assed for duties, taxes, and fees, of which VAT might be one (or not, if the import were, for example, a box of books, which are a VAT-exempt product category).

 YodhrinsForge wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
self declaring is when you travel outside your country and then are expected to, upon return, tell customs if you're bringing back any item over a certain value or amounts of cash you didn't have before to then pay taxes on.

I wasn't using a technical term man, I just meant that if you have knowledge that there's a tax you were supposed to pay and circumstances meant you didn't pay it, you're supposed to complete a Self Assessment Tax Return(most people don't need to do that here, your taxes just get automatically deducted from your wages/salary unless you're self-employed or running some "tax efficient" scam as a "business owner") at the end of the financial year and report what you owe to HMRC.

I'm in the UK and previously had to complete a self-assessment tax return for many years. Self-assessment is for income tax. Duties and VAT form no part of that process and there's no way to declare VAT on imports via self-assessment. If you receive a shipment containing imported items, and a 'Customs Payable' notice is not attached to it, there's simply nothing to be paid, either because it's been assessed to have zero liability, or because customs officials didn't bother applying it, or made a mistake. In either case, there is nothing to pay and nothing to declare. The system might be leaky (senders get away with filling out customs forms with lower declared values, sometimes customs can't be bothered or don't have the resources to assess every package, and so on), but it's nothing to do with recipients not declaring VAT or duties that are due.

EDIT: Apologies, missed one of the quote tags.

We have tax for anything you buy outside the country from $20. And we live like this for years. And some kind of goods like cars for example have insane taxe of 80%. Idk, but for me people overreacting with new tariffs. Just another prices spike

kabaakaba wrote:
Idk, but for me people overreacting with new tariffs. Just another prices spike

I mean, it's not surprising that people would be unhappy about having to pay more...

Greenfield wrote:
-snip-

Welp apparently everything I thought I knew about our tax system and international purchases is wrong

 PenitentJake wrote:


I wonder how it would affect Canada. I imagine the product enters at a US port, because I think there's a big US Warehouse?

So the tariff would be applied to get the product to the Warehouse, raising the cost to the end user even if that end user lives in Canada. Not sure, but that's my best guess.

It won’t affect GW in Canada since apparently GW have been supplying Canada directly from the UK instead of the US since the tariff shenanigans started.

Very sorry to see this news. I live in the U.S. and I like a lot of small, offbeat UK and European miniature companies, a number of whom only sell their products directly, and my general impression is that many of them are under financial pressure. It's already costly to order from the U.K. and Europe due to high shipping, and added tariff costs won't help. I don't know how much of their sales come from the USA, but I'm a bit worried for all those UK mom and pop miniature companies.

I won't call it a silver lining or an upside - there's nothing good about this - but as others have noted, it is weird how things like this can shift your perspective. I used to contemplate my "pile of shame / opportunity" and wonder if I'd become some very odd sort of doomsday prepper. Right now I'm feeling like a prepper who's been proven right, and that pile is looking more and more like a wise investment.

 Cruentus wrote:

Spoiler:

Vorian wrote:

 ced1106 wrote:

Billicus wrote:
Is the comparison to VAT anything other than off topic copium? You have sales tax in the US already.

No. When CMON started charging VAT to backers, internationals were VERY upset, similar to how us yanks are reacting to tariffs.

What other taxes do internationals pay? We also have state tax in the USA, and sometimes shipping fees are an explicit additional cost, though not as often as the mail catalog days.

Should also mention, though, that, from 2020 to 2024, we had some serious inflation b/c of shipping instability, govt spending, sudden increase in rates after midterm elections, etc. What cost $4 in the USA in 2020 cost $5 in 2024. And that affected EVERYTHING. Despite the publicity over tariffs, in the USA, the majority of spending is in the service industry, which has no tariff, "just" inflation.

Inflation was a global thing. We all had it.

Buying from the UK in the US you should not be charged VAT.

Buying directly from the US we have VAT applied in the same way as anything being sold internally.

VAT is not the same as a tariff.

No, but we often are charged "VAT" by the company not taking that VAT out of the final price we pay online. Then there is the 25% of the "order value" shipping, where I could buy a 1oz something, which costs $50, but I get charged shipping on the price, not the actual cost of shipping. And let's not talk about the practice of "valuing" GBP higher than the actual conversion cost to USD, and THEN charging me my State's sales tax on top, and then shipping (inflated cost + VAT + US sales tax + 25% cost shipping). Yeah, you'll have to excuse my bitterness at being raked over the coals repeatedly buying stuff from the UK.

Yeah, there are some companies that don't remove the VAT when they should, though I haven't seen it much recently. Overpriced and illogical shipping cost calculations are the choice of the company, and have had the same coming from the USA to Europe. Greatly inflated prices based on exchange rates far beyond any that have existed in recent decades I've also seen from USD to Euro or GBP. US citizens are not uniquely targeted, shocking though it may seem. Companies choosing to make money from customer-hostile practises are pretty universal it seems.

kabaakaba wrote:
Idk, but for me people overreacting with new tariffs. Just another prices spike

I think there's a significant difference between, "Oh, GW is raising their prices 3-5% again," and, "Everything from outside the country is getting more expensive by at least 10% due to... reasons?"

For the yanks in the audience, has the ending of de Minis for China been felt/noticed in America? Did it make any difference? Just trying to see what the effect was and wondering if it will be the same for others now.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
For the yanks in the audience, has the ending of de Minis for China been felt/noticed in America? Did it make any difference? Just trying to see what the effect was and wondering if it will be the same for others now.

The Chinese changes haven't really affected my spending at all, but this will impact my orders from the Perry's and Victrix. I just spent $650 this morning as a result.

Ugh, I like supporting Traders Galaxy, but this will make that hurt if I want their actual physical products.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
For the yanks in the audience, has the ending of de Minis for China been felt/noticed in America? Did it make any difference? Just trying to see what the effect was and wondering if it will be the same for others now.

No, not at all. I am still ordering and getting my cases of Bleach trading cards as usual, no price differences.

And my wife's crystal socks.

But I actually suspect that the vendors in China are eating the charges, as they dramatically overcharge for these items anyway...case in point: 1 box of Kaixinsha Bleach Vol 2 trading cards sells for $26-34. It contains 10 packs of cards. In China each pack at the corner store sells for about 4 yuan or less...or around 60 cents.

If you order a case of 36, you can usually get them for $14-16 per box. Which is still massive profit for the vendor.

So...business as usual.