The newly enforced EU Customs rules have disrupted family traditions of exchanging care packages and gifts for my Irish children and thousands of others with links to the Irish diaspora in the UK, USA, Australia and anywhere else outside the EU. The simple joy of giving and receiving birthdays and holidays has been blocked by punitive taxes and the red tape associated with stringent new rules demanding that each item be weighed, described, assigned a value, affixed with the correct TARIC codes. All told, this means the loving exchange of gifts between grandparents and grandchildren throughout the Irish Diaspora is broken. 

This can be fixed. The rules can be simplified for non-commercial shipments and the tax-free total for gifts could be raised. Who on earth would bother to pay expensive postage for gifts worth a few euros to try to slip under the meager 45 Euro limit for goods and postage combined? How could you send a Christmas package with that incredibly low value limit? Are family members expected to send multiple packages, one for each gift at today’s postage rates? How would you feel knowing that gift recipients would have a large tax bill on receipt?

The EU Customs taxes are far more punitive than international standards. The tax free gift-allowance for the UK is 135 pounds, and at that, the Customs tax on excess value is 2.5% (the EU Customs tax is  23%), the US gift allowance is 100 dollars per item (in practice we've exchanged gifts for 15 years without a single tax bill from the US Customs). Both countries Customs gift tax-free limits are generous enough to allow for a tax-free exchange of gifts between families. 

Another concern is that large international retailers can work the system in a way that granny and grandpa sending their care packages can’t manage. For transactions arriving from outside the EU, Amazon omits local tax charges and estimates EU destination charges so that the end result is that the consumer is not double taxed. With the result that packages sent from Amazon are tax efficient, whereas packages from granny and grandpa are double taxed. I know my parents like to send lovely local crafts and artisan goods such as maple syrup from the local upstate New York farm, just as my care packages are full of Irish made goodies such as pottery from Penny’s Pottery Cafe in Ventry. We won’t shop Amazon or pay the new EU Customs tax so we’re out of luck.

I can’t be sure, but I wonder if perhaps that is the point – perhaps the EU is bestowing monopoly power on the gigantic international retailers quite on purpose to force everyone and anyone who wants to send parcels into the EU to buy Amazon. Whether intended or not, the effect the new EU Customs rules penalise local shopping with double taxation and lines the pockets of big international retailers such as Amazon.

Please add your name to this petition to request an increase to the EU Customs Gift Tax Free Allowance to allow families to shop local and exchange care packages and gifts.