In recent years, the dialogue with many exporting companies has been kept in the slightly cool shadow of the future BREXIT.
With disbelief, many have seen how the British desire for secession has come true. In many companies, there has been reluctance to make substantial decisions about their future UK business. Many EU companies have chosen the passive approach for several reasons, but here are two main trends:
1) Sales to the UK make up a smaller part of the total revenue, which is why a company, in the light of an unknown future cost, will be likely to “drop the UK revenue” and thus potentially lose their UK market.
2) Negotiation blindness.
Many business leaders, business developers and CFOs seem to have placed themselves in the waiting room, waiting for the BREXIT negotiations to come to a conclusion, an outcome. They seem to be waiting for an answer to the economic consequences of the external border, where the question of customs has particularly worried the companies normally impacted by import duties such as the clothing industry.
The thing is, however, that regardless of the outcome of the BREXIT negotiations, the British border becomes an external EU border, where all goods to the UK are treated as RoW goods (rest-of-the world). This means that all goods must be cleared through customs, where import duties and VAT must be settled, cf. the specified HS code, and at the same time costs are incurred for preparing customs clearance documents.
It is already possible to see the British tariffs as they will be after 1 January 2021. This will allow many EU companies to get out of the waiting room and find the new gaps in the market that will apparently come into play in the near future.
Are you curious about whether there are UK customs duties on your goods after 1 January 2021, then you can now see it here: https://www.gov.uk/check-tariffs-1-january-2021
TIMEVAT helps EU companies with their exports to the UK, among other places. Feel free to contact us for a non-binding talk about your export market opportunities.
