Buying/importing hi-fi from abroad

[thescarletpronster]

ALL of the larger courier company's handle the paperwork and duty/tax aspect for you. You can't pay tax/duty in advance as these charges are not applied until your shipment lands in the UK, at which time they will either email, call or write to you stating that you need to pay x amount to get your package delivered.

If the Japanese suppliers operate on an international basis then leave all the shipping aspects to them as they will probably get a much better price for shipping than you ever could.

Thanks a lot, to you and Dave, that is reassuring and that's what I'll do (unless I find out that any of my friends is visiting Japan in the next few months!).

Unsleepable gave an excellent link to a website to calculate tax/duty.

I had looked at that site before, but had the impression it was to calculate duty for people importing things as a business rather than as a consumer on a one-off basis. I'm a lot clearer about the state of things thanks to you fine people on this thread.