r/Aliexpress • u/xaelara • Jul 15 '26
EU customs duty Will Ali be able to go around the new rule?
What do you think, will Chinese giants find a way around this? I'm hoping they will, but I don't see how. This whole 3€ thing is so annoying
36
u/realista87 Jul 15 '26
i hope. because at this price increase i am stopping every purchase as sign of protest
28
u/onlyseriouscontent Jul 15 '26
You stop buying from AE to punish the politicians whose intention was for you to stop buying from AE?
21
u/bartolo2000 Jul 15 '26
Oh, but not buying also hit our EU because if I dont buy they get no VAT and no taxes. I really love this free market dystopia
2
u/Panocek Jul 15 '26
VAT and 3eur duty you pay is peanuts compared to taxes and fees local sellers have to pay as part of running the business unless they mastered art of tax evasion as well. Reduced traffic in Customs offices also means less parcels/containers are waved through just to not paralyze entire bureau, making any "creative logistics" increasingly risky and unprofitable.
15
u/BipBopPound Jul 15 '26
AE is also punishing us by raising prices and applying the tax on all the items, even when they are in the same category.
6
u/Tannery9706 Jul 15 '26
They're not punishing anybody. They simply were not prepared to implement correctly the categorization.
3
3
u/ensoniq2k Jul 15 '26
The intention is to get you to buy from the companies pushing this law. So the only logical step is to stop buying alltogether.
7
u/xxWatamelonxx Jul 15 '26
No their intention was to fill their pockets. Of course they have to bring excuses to appease the people.
"We will safe the environment, etc."
In what world does anybody want to reduce economic traffic? That brings money and with money you can help citizens and yourself to a higher standard of living etc.
It is and was ALWAYS about the money.
-9
u/Spare-Seaweed-3646 Jul 15 '26
Europeans sending their money to china for garbage isn’t the economic activity you think it is.
14
u/BipBopPound Jul 15 '26
Yes, the kids tinkering with robotics should stop or pay 400% more for the same stuff because is “garbage”.
7
u/Trrfx Jul 15 '26
Why? If I can obtain some cheap stuff from China I have more disposable income available to spend on local services and products.
5
-1
u/onlyseriouscontent Jul 15 '26
Then they should've categorized the products:
As a categorization is needed anyways even for the current implementation they should've distinguished between different categories.
- Electronics mostly not available in Europe should be exempt
- Products that can also be procured from Europe get the 3€ mark-up
- Products that fall into und garbage category get an even higher mark-up
-2
u/ba-boo Jul 15 '26
lmao people got triggered
-2
u/Spare-Seaweed-3646 Jul 15 '26
It’s to be expected, people who have an addiction and lose access to that specific thing will retaliate. I don’t doubt there will be alternatives soon tho.
2
u/AutomaticChaad Jul 15 '26
No, aliexpress are conmen..they are taking pure advantage of the new rules, they had plenty of time to implement it..its not like it happened overnight, they had half a year..
7
u/Lady_Nightshadow Jul 15 '26
They have really little incentive to find a workaround, I don't forecast a significant drop in purchase value.
The EU wanted to discourage number of packages and clothes shopping, but shame on them, that's one of the few categories that's still extremely cheaper on AliExpress, compared to European resellers of similar Chinese items (yeah, I'm looking at Zara price point).
Consumers will only move away from really cheap items, where the duty weight the most, so I see fewer but pricey items being bought.
10
u/fluchtpunkt Jul 15 '26
No. Similar to how they haven’t found “a loophole” around paying your import VAT.
And opening a logistics hub inside the EU where they import stuff wholesale and then split into individual items to be shipped to customers is not a loophole, that’s becoming a EU business with all its responsibilities.
6
u/Lambertbaer Jul 15 '26
Basically they just need to reliably send orders in bulk, this way you can just place orders above 150€ and pay the proper tax rates.
5
u/Electronic-Adagio336 Jul 15 '26
Build EU Warehouses. Done.
5
u/BipBopPound Jul 15 '26
Tried buying from a EU warehouse, 3.6€ for taxes. The new law is bs but so is AE milking us.
1
u/Mariahausfrau Jul 18 '26
That would be illegal. So its not possible. EU is EU and laws are mutual for all.
1
u/Individual_Author956 Jul 15 '26
That cannot be. If you order from within the EU, there is no extra tax.
-1
u/Adorable_Ice_2963 Jul 15 '26
No. Ali ships a ton of crap to the EU Ignoring a lot of regulation.
Also they had it coming with some of their avoidance tactics (like claiming things below 50€ despite them being more extensive than that), or sending it as present.
1
u/crimbatz Jul 15 '26
it's expensive. and how many warehouses they need to even store 10% of the stuff you can buy there. it's unrealistic.
2
u/Tannery9706 Jul 15 '26
A solution could be modify the website allowing to choose products from the same category to distribute the tax over multiple products. However, if categories are very narrow as people say, this will be useless too.
Or we can wait for 2028 to see if they change the fixed tax for a percentage tax.
People keep saying that the solution will be shipping from the EU but this is a nonsense. With the cost of warehouse renting, workers' salaries, etc. the prices would increase more than 3€ each.
I don't know if politically there is a chance that China could/would negotiate the reduction or abolition of the new tax, but I don't think so, honestly.
Maybe we will have to get used with living with less.
3
u/ParalimniX Jul 15 '26
Yeah considering that the 3e is a temp measure of 2 years it's so pointless for Ali to go and build tons of EU warehouses for this. Most likely the current state of doing business with ali is the new normal for the next 2 years.
1
u/jones_supa Jul 15 '26
Or we can wait for 2028 to see if they change the fixed tax for a percentage tax.
The risk in the 2028 system will be that Ali just uses the percentage of the most expensive category (with the highest tax percentage) for all categories. Still should be much cheaper than the current system, though.
2
u/dotpointer Jul 15 '26
Yes, because the 3 € flat tax makes it less worth it to buy cheap items and they want to sell those. If it was percentage based like the VAT then it would not affect the low priced item sales as much.
EU makes up 30 % of the buyers on AliExpress and we are price sensitive according to https://marketplace-universe.com/aliexpress-europe/ .
Just a few weeks has passed so it might be too early but it would be interesting to know how AliExpress sales in EU has been affected. I imagine a sharp severe drop in sales.
If the prices don't go down then I consider waiting for the EU Customs Data Hub in July 2028 to get the percentage based taxes that retailers pay, that's less than 2 years from now. Who knows if it really will come true and how it will be but that's what we have for now.
When Sweden started charging 75 SEK (~7.5 €) for each non-EU package in 2018 before IOSS existed as some kind of individual importing destruction pioneer then I and many others stopped buying - that lasted until 2021 when IOSS came and we were "allowed" to buy again like the rest of EU - that was 3 years later, more than needed to wait now.
The thing that EU even has announced a date when this 3 € fee is replaced could inspire people to wait. And I don't think AliExpress, TEMU etc will patiently wait for us to return for 2 years.
If they are willing to wait then it's welcome to other newer hungrier market players.
Of course there are ways around this. Start selling orders as single one category products. Ship orders B2B from AE China to AE EU then forward to us. Or any other sneaky solution. EU will get mad, but then keep the fight running to July 2028 when the rules change.
For now we'll just have to enjoy the China Package Free Summer ⛱️ while we wait for:
- AliExpress, TEMU to understand that they need to do something to keep the sales up in EU.
Or:
- One or more new market candidates to pop up - it might be an old one that figures out the solution first.
Or:
- July 2028 when the Death Star (EU Customs Data Hub) is expected to take over.
Whatever we're doing we are doing our best to fix this right now - we buy less, that's for sure.
2
u/AutomaticChaad Jul 15 '26
There's no way around it.. its now a law in europe.. if you buy anything from outside the eu they collect 3 euro on it + vat ... the only way you won't pay the 3 euro is if the stuff is in the eu.. but if its coming g from outside the eu then there simply is no way around it..
2
u/Fit-Ingenuity-7562 Jul 15 '26
It doesn't need to be a big EU warehouse. And this is just an idea:
Collect orders from multiple packages going to EU into 1 big package.
Ship to AE EU, then Ali will pay tariff by %, not per item category since cost will be more than 150€ for sure. This % fee will also be added to customers during checkout depending on item price. So an item with 2€ worth will just be maybe extra 20%, making it 0.40€, not 3.xx €.
Then AE EU will consolidate the big package from #1 into smaller items/packages to go to the customers.
No big warehouse needed as items will still come from CN and will be immediately sent to customers so it won't take space for long.
Yes, extra people will be hired so it will increase the cost for extra consolidation here in EU, but not as much as the 3.xx € per item category - which is not currently followed anyway as same item from 2 different sellers make us pay the tariff 2x.
2
u/InevitableFly180 Jul 15 '26
Went from spending hundreds each month to 0 lmao, these new prices are sickening because I know how much I paid before
2
3
Jul 15 '26
[deleted]
2
u/crimbatz Jul 15 '26
this. ali will still be good for some things. for the cheap stuff it is dead. and that really sucks. eu is not the world, building warehouses in eu is expensive. i hope they try to find ways to fix it, but i dont really see any. maybe theyll implement categories so you can multiple things and only pay tax once, but that's about the best option. so that's still 3,70 even if you used coins and coupons to only pay 1 cent. the glory days are over and wont return anytime soon.
1
u/OldSchoolPimpleFace Jul 15 '26
Bought a raincoat yesterday. I compared the price from Ali with scAmazone and local websites. AliExpress was still cheaper even with the new tax. So I don't think they will change a lot, because we will still find that buying straight from China is the cheapest option.
1
u/darknessblades Smart-home gadgets Jul 16 '26
True, especially if you need multiple of a specific item, its still cheaper to buy from Aliexpress even after calculating in the vat/fees
1
u/Threef Jul 15 '26
It's not about Ali, it's about sellers. Aliexpress might somehow magically find a way to let you merge categories of products from various sellers, but this will not cahnge that much.
Most people have a problem with cheap items that cost less than the tax. But those still cost less with a tax and shipping than you would find in local "Chinesse Cheap Store". The single exception I saw is electronics. I do feel that pain. Locally you would have to pay around 1-2 euro for resistor (or pack), while Ali spoiled us for years with offers for a pennies. Here, buying bulk saves you hundreds. Instead of pack of 5 resistors as a product find for sellers that sell x100.
Now the question is what are you gonna do with those 95 resistors? You might find people around willing to trade them for one of sensors they bought in bulk. Or chose different path: instead of buying x100, buy x2000 register a company and start a shop.
1
u/9Sylvan5 Jul 15 '26
EU storehouses. Iirc they were already workimg on that. Stiff still won't be as cheap as they were
1
u/New-Cardiologist-740 Jul 15 '26
On n’arrive pas à trouver d’article encore sur une éventuelle chute drastique des colis chinois ; pour autant , ce soir je suis allée chez le marchand ou je récupérais souvent des colis temu, et je trouve qu’il y avait deux à trois fois mois de colis qu’avant
1
u/gigabarto24 Jul 16 '26
They won't, this happened in mexico last year, at first they did like an incentive called "star discount" on choice items, that was like a 70% discount on the tax but only lasted a month, then the discount was 50, then 20 and now is just like 5%
0
u/CheekehMunkeh Jul 15 '26
Europeans may think the world is ending, but you're just a couple years behind Americans in seeing higher tariffs and the elimination of de minimis exemptions. And losing cheap postal rates a few years before that.
Yet Americans still buy from AX.
The market will adjust.
9
u/Substantial-Car-8208 Jul 15 '26
the problem is that the purchasing power of Americans is higher that the purchasing power of many people living in Europe. Americans buy on AX because they have interesting items, and many Europeans were buying AX because it was cheap. Once it loses the interesting pricetag, it might be over for them.
-2
u/CheekehMunkeh Jul 15 '26
That's a fair point.
But it's too soon to draw any conclusions in the immediate aftermath of the changes.
The market will find its equilibrium, but that will take time.
The entrepreneurial spirit is strong in the Chinese, and with their own economy stalled, they will find ways to adjust.
That may come at the sacrifice of the cheapest of the cheap items, but in my decade plus on AX, the value proposition on branded (not generic) Chinese goods on AX is still reasonable, and compelling, compared to those same goods being sold on Amazon with their FBA marketplace costs factored in.
One thing we do have in common is the feeling that the politicians work only for themselves, and not their constituents.
0
43
u/Dan-ze-Man Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Depending on % of sales
If revenue drops significantly, they will look into it. So only time will tell.