Mistakes|Marko Kareisen’s example is proof of how alcohol can be ordered tax-free from an EU country.
from Vantaa Marko Kareinen was confused at the end of May, when he noticed that money had arrived in his bank account from the Tax Administration.
He opened Omavero and noticed a letter that confused him even more.
The tax administration will remove the prescribed default fee, the letter read. The reason was said to be “Incomplete investigation by the Tax Administration”.
It was about the alcohol Kareisen ordered about a year ago. He ordered more than a dozen three-liter bottles of wine and a box of sparkling wine from a German online store he was familiar with at the time.
The previous couple of orders from the online store had arrived in Finland within a week. Now there was no word about the order, even though it had already been 6-7 weeks. Around the same time, the news reported that Customs and the Tax Administration had started about power control.
The idea behind the power monitoring was that part of the alcohol deliveries ordered from foreign online stores were stopped and inspected by Customs. The purpose was to check whether advance notification of the purchase had been made and the required taxes paid.
Kareinen guessed that his order must have been left at Customs. This is how it happened. Kareinen soon received a bill for 480 euros from Customs.
“I paid it kindly and decided that the orders were now here.”
Shaking however, it does not end there. A week ago Helsingin Sanomat reported that around 400 Finns have paid taxes for nothing on the alcohol they ordered from abroad. The amount of wrongly collected taxes varies from less than a hundred euros to a few thousand. A message has been sent to those receiving a refund.
Kareinen is one of them.
“I’m laughing at my beard here,” Kareinen sums up her mood after the initial confusion subsides.
However, it has not been clear to him why the taxman assessed his order a new time.
Tax administration specified in connection with its power monitoring that in some situations the obligation to pay lies with the seller and in some situations with the customer. The important thing is who handles the transport of the alcohol order. If the seller arranges the transport or even recommends a transport company, he must pay the taxes.
In the German online store used by Kareisen, you have to purchase transport separately for the order.
“When I placed the order for the first time, they recommended various transport companies. You can directly enter the order number of the online store on the transport company’s website, and the orders will be combined automatically,” he says.
In this case, the payment of taxes therefore belongs to the seller.
Kareisen’s example shows that Finns can order alcohol from another EU country without paying taxes on the buyer.
“It is with this decision that the order has the right to be taxed [tietyissä tapauksissa] repealed. Does this mean that we Finns have even been led astray when some people think that alcohol cannot be ordered this way?”
However, Kareinen does not intend to use the returned money for tax-free alcohol purchases.
“Of course, I will use the money for my wife.”
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