If you live in the UK or in the EU, you’ve no doubt noticed an unwelcome trend in added fees and charges when receiving parcels from online shopping. Even parcels sent from family and friends abroad are turning up with added fees to pay.

There’s a lot of confusion about what these fees are for, when they should be applied, and why they’ve even come into play. And if you’re an expat business owner, you might be wondering what you can do to try to minimise the pain of these fees for your customers so that they keep coming back and ordering from you.

My guest today is Matt Harrison, a Sales Director at tax compliance firm, Avalara. He’s going to explain where these fees and charges have come from, when we have to pay them and why, if customs forms are filled out correctly, it should still be ok to send parcels to your friends and family overseas for Christmas.