Legality of online tobacco orders from EU to UK??

[Papa Lazarou]

Hi. I was wondering if any of you UK guys had any experience of ordering tobacco or cigs from one of the many online merchants offering to ship from Spain etc?

Anyone ordered successfully? If so where from? What are the legalities of it? It seems its a grey area, from what I've read anyway. It seems the Gov't don't much like it, but as far as I can see as long as it is for personal use and not re-sale, I can't find any specific law against it??

I've vastly cut down on the real cigs since finding e-cigs but still enjoy the odd one, and I'm happy with that for the time being..

Cheers

 

[Soot]

I think you're in a grey area Papa. You're right about the personal use provision but I'm not aware of any strict rule as to what constitutes personal use. Re-sale is certainly illegal. As for getting smokes through the post I'd phone HM's Customs & Excise. Getting cigs through the post could well be treated differently than bringing them in in person.

PS - yes - I've used the mail order route a couple of times and they got through on both occasions. I didn't order that much to worry about if impounded.

 

[Bertrand]

I've bought some cigars from Switzerland. They knew what they were doing. Innocuous looking package on the outside, heat sealed odour proof plastic wrap on the inside. No mention of tobacco anywhere. I think they're mostly for sale to the US, where Cubans are still illegal, but it still does a good job of passing through customs if you're doing it to evade duty.

It's definitely not legal to send it to Australia. But if it gets caught they just seize it and ask you to pay the duties you tried to shirk.

Each cigar you smoke steals from hospitals, schools, etc. so it's only really for evil people like me, comfortable in being despicable.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

I guess there's no harm in asking Customs what their view of it is. Thanks Soot.

The aim is not to evade duty. As I understand it, within the European Union duty paid in one country is deemed to be duty paid. There is no such thing any more as duty free shopping when travelling between EU countries. And theoretically, no limit on how much tobacco or alcohol you move from one EU country to the other, unless you resell it illegally. This is where you have a massive grey area where Joe Blogs drives to Belgium or wherever and loads up his car with 50kg of rolling tobacco... He can say it's for personal use, but most would not believe him..

The trouble is that tax is applied at massively different rates within different member states. I strongly suspect tobacco duty in the UK is one of the highest rates of all

 

[Bertrand]

Lovely specious justification there.. hehehe.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

LOL

 

[yo han]

Overhere it's not legal but I've been ordering from Indonesia for over 2 years now and never got caught And even if they would open a package I bet they'd just throw it away or something like that (no big deal if it doesn't happen too often). The next package would probably just slip through again. They can't inspect millions of packages each day.