It has come to my attention that as of 1st July 2026, the Royal Mail Send an Item website is now making the pre-payment of VAT and import duties to EU countries by UK-based senders of commercial goods (including second-hand books) obligatory, on orders whose value is up to 150 Euros. This follows a recent change in EU rules.
I have reprogrammed the shop accordingly so that on all book sales to EU countries, tax is calculated at the prevailing rate for books in the destination country, which varies widely according to the country. Additionally, a fixed import duty charge of 3 Euros per tariff code on the customs declaration is being collected on behalf of the EU, and the Royal Mail itself is charging a £1 processing fee for handling these charges through its own IOSS account.
Since as a very small business, my bookshop is not registered for VAT and cannot afford the cost of IOSS registration via an EU intermediary, my only option now for continued compliance on sales to all countries in the EU seems to be to prepay the VAT and import fees via the Royal Mail’s IOSS account.
Therefore I have configured the shop to charge these up front to customers selecting EU countries for shipping purposes. They are clearly marked and will be no more than I have to prepay on the same customer’s behalf to the Royal Mail.
1. The value-added tax at book rate to the destination country is automatically calculated at the applicable percentage of the VAT-exclusive order value and declared accordingly as ‘Printed Book VAT within EU’, with the relevant rate to the country concerned declared before this. Thus, for example, on orders to France, it appears as ‘5.5% Printed Book VAT within EU’, but to Germany it appears as ‘7% Printed Book VAT within EU’.
2. The fixed import duty and processing charge, which is currently around £3.40 in British pounds, appears as a separate line, labelled ‘Flat-rate prepaid EU import duty including Royal Mail processing fee’.
On orders over 150 Euros in value, these charges will not be collected up front, nor will I pay them to the Royal Mail on the customer’s behalf. Therefore, on these higher-value orders, the customer will still have to pay the charges to the postal service in their country at the point of import, with likely higher handling fees than those I have to prepay on lower-value orders.
In the unlikely but possible event that the Royal Mail deems an order value in British pounds to be over 150 Euros on the day of postage being booked whereas my website calculated it as being just under 150 Euros on the day when the customer paid for their order, I shall simply refund the prepaid duties to the customer because they will then have to pay them on receipt anyway. This is the fairest way to proceed. Please try to avoid orders close to 150 Euros in value in equivalent terms to avoid risks of mismatches like this – whether or not charges should be collected and pre-paid up front should be clear-cut if the value is significantly above or below this.
I have yet to stress-test the Royal Mail website to ensure that it is correctly calculating book-rate VAT to all EU countries. If it does not, I’ll simply have to pay the difference until it does, because I refuse to charge my customers more than the legally valid rate of VAT on books in the countries to which I am sending them.
Thanking you for your understanding as we navigate this new legislation together. For sales to the UK, there will remain no VAT due because books are zero-rated in the UK. For sales to non-EU countries, the customer will remain responsible for paying any taxes and duties due on receipt irrespective of order value, until further notice.
Philip Graves [owner and manager, Astrolearn astrology bookshop]
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