Red in Germany - Import-Fragen

[Felix K.]

This sounds much better, Anthony, thanks for the clarification.
So is there no import duty on stills cameras in the EU?
Any idea why that must be the case (as opposed to motion cameras)?

Well I guess it's maybe just to much hassle because the larger number of still cameras is under 300 $? Or maybe because tourists would have to declare them as property when they visit a country... no clue really.

Tax laws and such like are all Greek to me. And I have 2 tax consultants in my family...

[Erik Schneider]

So much misinformation here. Some due to typos, some due to language barriers.

The TARIC codes which customs use to determine the amount of duty charged are not something which you can "make up" or "persuade FedEx". The TARIC codes are written on the export notice which Red legally have to fill in when they ship overseas.

The fact is that the Red is classified using the TARIC code for digital stills camera. This is not "a lie", this is the only suitable TARIC category at present (maybe this will change in a year or two when digital cinema cameras become more common????).

The only flexibility is when you have bought accessories as well as your camera.
Technically customs should charge you the appropriate duty for those (different rates for LCDs, RAID drives, cables, etc).
In practise customs usually say "if it is all in the same package, we will class everything at the code of the main item".

AFAIK all that I have stated above is currently correct (as of 5 Nov 2009).

The result was that when my camera arrived I had to assure FedEx that I would pay the VAT, but there was 0 duty due.

And because I am VAT registered, I then got a full refund on the VAT.

I belive that this is not quite correct.

I orderd a Red for an university in Germany. The logistic company (Sirl Interaktive Logistik GmbH) contacted me because they were not quiete sure what Tarric codes to use. So I dived into the subject.

For Export form the USA Red has to use NAICS codes. You can look them up here.

Tarric codes are the EU pedant to NAICS codes. They are a lot of times very close to NAICS codes but not all the time. Tarric codes can be looked up here.

What I did was look up the NAICS codes and then find the corresponding TARRIC codes.

As I read here I decided after some consideration to use the TARIC code for "digital cameras" (8525 80 30) for the Red Body. "Digital cameras" sounds fine but in the German version it says "Digitale Fotoapparate" which means digital still cameras. So this was a bit confusing and I was not so sure about it.

At the customs the camera got into a control by German customs. They were confused too and I had a long telephone call with a man from German customs. He stated that "digital cameras" would be only the right code if the camera was mainly used to shoot stills ... which we all know is not the case.

In fact I later found the paper which I think he was referring to. You can read it here (there exist also a German version and probably other ones in other european languages too).

The problem was not solved as none of the categories seemed to be the right one. I recalled him later and he found a "Gutachten" (this is a German word - "expertise" I belive in English) which was made for classifiying the Red by an expert therefore for him the case was closed.

Later I found out that the TARIC code was changed from 85258030 to 85258091. This led to a duty of 4,9 % for the body.

So I think it is save to say that in the EU the correct way to classify the camera is as 85258091 (Video camera recorders / Only able to record sound and images taken by the television camera) as there is already an expertise for the camera.

Personaly I find this whole custom policy very intransparent or at least too complicated for non-custom-experts.

I hope that clarifies the issue a bit.