The story continues today, as I got up early to be the first inline when the Swedish Custom’s opened up their phone exchange at 8:00. At this point I got through to a person almost immediately: an apologetic young man at the exchange that had to tell me my question should be directed at the customer service desk. The customer service desk that doesn’t open until 9:00.
Spend a solid hour queueing on the telephone to speak to someone as Postnord. I wanted to complain about the VAT they are “requesting” me to pay.
They calculate 25% VAT on all the goods included in the package, but the most expensive item in the package is a book. Books are classified different from most goods in that they are only taxed with 6% VAT. The total VAT I owe the government on the goods in the package is less than half what I am being billed for.
Their answer on the phone: the goods should be shipped separately from each other to qualify for per-item VAT.
This seems like total nonsense to me. Sadly, I can’t just contact Swedish Customs as their telephone exchange closes at 16:30. First thing tomorrow morning at 8:00, I guess.
I do not mind paying VAT on overseas products. I do mind paying more VAT than the goods are officially taxed as.
Trying out a CMS I looked at way back in the day: Chyrp. (Actually the Chyrp Lite fork.) Lets see how easy it is to align this with the IndieWeb. One of the nice things: it supports different post types as plugins – called Feathers!