With the rise of global online shopping of cheap products from sites like Wish and Alibaba has now become a headache for the Swedish national postal service, Postnord and the Swedish Border Customs .
Sweden is a part of the European Union and under the current trade rules ,buying goods from outside the European Union, you as a consumer is obliged to pay VAT and customs duty for imports.
This is nothing new .
The new situation is that the massive inflow of packages from China etc of cheap products from online sites has made this rule almost impossible to apply.
Every day 150000 packages arrives at Stockholm Arlanda Airport and 120000 of them comes from a non-EU country.
Swedish border customs has now asked Postnord to close this loophole and that VAT will be charged .
So,will this effect you as a record buyer? Probably yes!
As of 1 March 2018 , you as a consumer of goods from non-EU country will be charged to pay a administration fee of 75SKR (7.4€/9$) on goods with a maximum value 1500SKR(148€/182$) .
Goods with a value over 1500SKR will have a administration fee 125SKR (12€/15$)
And on top of the value of the goods you will have to pay the Swedish VAT that currently is 25%.
*Note: The administration fee from Postnord and VAT fee from swedish customs only effects residents living in Sweden
You can read more about the trade rules: