Advice on paying tax when sending and selling pearls

[Chris Teo]

Hello everyone, i'm new here and hoped you could get me some advice with this. I want to start selling pearls online and i'm trying to calculate all of the costs and pricing involved. Do you know how to find out what tax i would pay when sending pearls to different countries? I want to sell to lots of places including Europe and the U.S.A.

thank you

 

[pattye]

Hi Chris, Welcome to P-G,

I have used this online calculator a few times to see if I would pay duty on items purchased overseas. I have no idea if it would be helpful for you in Vietnam.

 

[pearlescence]

Usually the recipient pays the import tax - that means your customer rather than you, although you should certainly know these things to inform them of likely additional costs.

 

[jshepherd]

To add to Pattye's comment, YOU wouldn't pay anything to ship to the other countries. Duty is a tax paid by the person who makes the purchase. It would be very difficult to know the duty and pay the duty for every country. Some are very high.

On a side note, be very careful in buying anything in Vietnam. I've seen pearls for sale there everywhere. Without exception, every booth, every store (even one specializing in ONLY pearls and even giving demonstrations on how they are grown), and every vendor swore up and down that they were selling Vietnamese pearls. None of them were. They were all low-grade Chinese freshwater pearls.

Vietnamese pearls have a very distinct look to them and production is extremely limited. The people I know growing pearls in Vietname export every harvest. There is no local wholesale or retail market for them.

 

[Katbran]

Hi Chris, Welcome to P-G,

I have used this online calculator a few times to see if I would pay duty on items purchased overseas. I have no idea if it would be helpful for you in Vietnam.

Hey Pattye...that's a great site!! I spent an hour yesterday on the US Customs website trying to figure out how much duty a customer would have to pay on something that I sent by Fed Ex. Customs site was so confusing. This will be quite helpful I'm sure. When I plugged in the information it said that there will be no duty on the package. Hope that's right ! I warned her that there might be something to pay. Be a nice surprise if it was 0$ !! Is there some dollar limit that kicks in at some point. There must be some duty on pearls somewhere along the line I would think? It's 10% here in Australia once you pass $1,000 value.

 

[pearlescence]

?18 here, then 20% VAT for loose. I think there is duty to pay as well for finished jewellery but I've never imported any.No duty on loose.
:-(

 

[Chris Teo]

Thank you so much for all the advice everybody. I've checked out the charges when importing to the UK from Vietnam; Pearl Jewelry has got an import duty rate of 2.5% and a VAT rate of 20%. The duty is only paid on items above ?135. To the US the import duty is 6.5% when an item is over $200.

I'm still confused however about the impact on the seller. How do you manage on your sites? When do you tell the customer about this charge (because they may not expect it)? If i bought something from a website then had to pay an extra 20% to the delivery man, i might be annoyed.

thank you for that link Jeremy, those are fantastic pearls. I don't know how to crack the market here yet, but i will definitely try. The one thing i've learnt from living i Vietnam is that there is always a way to do anything. I've seen plenty of freshwater pearls here (i think from china even though they claim they are from Ph? Quốc island in Vietnam). In fact when i was looking at some in a market store and a lady came up to me shouting 'natural natural', she then scratched one against a window to leave a white mark, then put a lighter on it to try to burn it - all of this was supposed to convince me that they are natural...

 

[cyndayco]

... In fact when i was looking at some in a market store and a lady came up to me shouting 'natural natural', she then scratched one against a window to leave a white mark, then put a lighter on it to try to burn it - all of this was supposed to convince me that they are natural...

It hurts just to picture it.

 

[pearlescence]

Why do people do that thing with the lighter - I've seen it with shoes and handbags and all sorts in various countries.
When importing to the UK you can also add the carrier charge for customs clearance and the carrier's refund of the tax and duty paid - that's another ?10-?15. Same with all the other EU countries.
All the charges are due as the items cross the border. I've never had a customer grumble after the event about any charges levied (and I wish I only had to pay US or Australia taxes and duty!)
What sort of pearls are you looking to supply?

 

[pattye]

Chris, Katbran and all,

Right, as sellers, we don't pay those fees nor can we be responsible for telling a customer exactly what they will pay, but certainly let them know there can be associated charges. Ideally, one should be able to check ones own country without too much trouble. Most of the etsy sellers that do ship internationally advise the buyer of possible duty and tax in their shipping information.

Chris, good luck with your pearl adventure, and don't buy any burnt pearls! (We've heard about that test before and someone showed a SS pearl, badly burned, eek!, wondering how to repair it.)

 

[DaveTT]

ah Yes, I have also seen that lighter test irl in Indonesia.
They did it on a FW pearl, the test is about showing that the pearl is "real" and not a fake plastic pearl.
If the pearl is fake ( plastic ) it will burn and if it is real it will not.
This is there way of showing that this is a "real" pearl, and natural normally just mean "real" pearl for them
Anyway I wouldn't recommend anyone to do this "test".

BTW , I have indeed tried this "test" on a low quality SS pearl, just for fun.
And nothing really happened, the pearl wasn't even hot.

 

[CeciliaW]

I've seen the lighter test done on jade bangles, for the same purpose, to prove it 's not plastic. Though that doesn't prove it's really jade either, could be any number of other dyed stones.

 

[Chris Teo]

thank you for the information. I'm planning on selling Akoya, South Sea and Freshwater pearls if i can get them. I would also love to get hold of some Melo pearls.

 

[jshepherd]

thank you for the information. I'm planning on selling Akoya, South Sea and Freshwater pearls if i can get them. I would also love to get hold of some Melo pearls.

Melo pearls? Trust me. You don't want to get into those.

It's going to be difficult though as most of the pearls you're describing don't come from Vietnam and the ones that do (V. akoya) aren't largely processed in Vietnam. They are processed in Japan and sold internationally. There really isn't any competitive advantage to sourcing pearls there.

 

[Caitlin]

Thanks Jeremy, for one of those honest (and up to the minute) tips you can find no where else online, but pearl-guide.com. Most pearl people learn stuff like that, the hard way.

 

[jshepherd]

Sure One thing I forgot to mention is that Vietnamese are also processed by one large company in Thailand.

What I mean by processing is not maeshori, bleaching, polishing and the like. I am referring to drilling, matching and placing pearls onto temporary hanks. To do this on a commercial scale, you need pearl processing factories.

 

[Chris Teo]

I appreciate the advice too. I know there are Akoya here. I also thought there were some South Seas too.

What's the problem with Melo pearls? I know they are very expensive, but i have always liked the look of them.

 

[pearlescence]

Hi
Before you get into trading pearls, may I ask how much you know about pearls? I've been doing this for more than ten years and I would say I'm just starting to get the hang of it all. There is a lot to know about pearls and about business in general. Bluntly, you won't make a lot of money by trying to sell wholesaled Chinese freshwater from Vietnam when serious players in the market go to China. You might as well be based here in the UK. Being in Vietnam won't add anything. And if you don't know a lot about pearls you'll be buying those Tahitian blacks by the hanks for tahitian prices.
There's lots of great stuff really being produced in Vietnam. Unless you have a reason to concentrate on pearls I'd recommend you look for something which really is Vietnam based.
(we're not trying to put you off because we don't want competition but because we can see a possible not good outcome for you)

 

[Chris Teo]

I can see where your coming from. And thank you for trying to warn me. I have found some farms, and i will try to contact them and see if they can sell me good pearls for wholesale prices. If they don't then i will know enough to quit before putting any money into this thing.

I don't know a lot about pearls. Only what i've read and i've seen plenty low quality (i think) pearls. I think there is an opportunity here and i need to explore it a bit more first.

 

[KarinK]

Be careful as there are also plenty of good looking freshwater pearls being sold as Akoya pearls at much higher prices.

- Karin