Why are small orders under €22 VAT free on Amazon.co.uk?

I was expecting a big negative change when shopping on Amazon.co.uk from Ireland in a negative way. I've been using Hagglezon which compares the various Amazon sites across Europe to give you the best price. You have to factor in postage but it can work out cheaper and if UK Amazon was a lot off faff, it made sense to swap to Amazon.de

It does seem everything is more or less the same. You get charged something called import fees deposit which is identical to the old VAT so no difference there. The main difference is you can take advantage of a loophole that allows small packages of a value less than €22 to enter the EU VAT free. This was due to abolished on January 1st but has been extended until the 1st July 2021.

So if you order something for £18 from Amazon.co.uk and you get it delivered to an Irish address, assuming the seller is VAT registered, you will get it for £15. Amazon.co.uk is VAT registered for sure but many third-party sellers are not, so you won't get the VAT-free price as there was no VAT in the first place.

There are some real bargains to be had at the moment. You can combine this with subscribe and save, so save 15% off your order and then possibly another 20% off due to VAT.

Its a small win but those baby wipes are cheap as chips. Cheaper than even the Aldi. You get through those very quickly with babies so worth stockpiling while they are going cheap. You can also save a bit looking in the Amazon Warehouse. They are returned goods and sometimes only have a few pennies knocked off but still worth it.

You can read more about shopping on Amazon after Brexit on money guide ireland

This €22 loophole also affects Aliexpress, so fill your boots up with all the cheap tat from China before they have to start paying VAT. More info on that here. Got til July too but best off stopping ordering sometime in May as you don't want to be getting a bill from An Post about some customers for some €2 product.

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