Orders from overseas to the Switzerland: taxed by customs or not?

To bounce on a comment to a previous post, a summary of the criteria for taxation and tax amounts when you deliver goods in Switzerland, by the post office or another distributor of mail.

The situation from 2019:

When you order a merchandise from abroad to Switzerland, you are normally exempted from paying foreign VAT, which will therefore be deducted from the amount displayed during the order process. This is the case for example at Amazon. This is less common among "small" merchants, who do not deduct foreign VAT.

Swiss VAT will be taxed at the entry into Switzerland (VAT). The law changed at the beginning of 2019, and now obligates the "big" foreign merchants to charge VAT directly during the ordering process. Amazon.fr (and Amazon.de also) deducts French VAT (or German…) and adds Swiss VAT (2.5% for books and 7.7% for the remainder) of all orders delivered to a Swiss address.

In this case there is no additional customs tax levied by the carrier (the Post office or other)

Therefore, as of 2019, we must also pay Swiss VAT for "small" orders, which was not the case before. On the other hand, the customs processing fee disappears for the larger orders. This system has the big advantage for the consumer to avoid the unpleasant surprise of customs clearance costs: We know the final cost directly, and there will be no additional customs charges.

Amazon customer service help keeps up-to-date information about this:

Attention: Purchases made on Amazon marketplace are not subject to this new system, but rather to the systems below.

So it comes to the second case: for the smaller merchants who are not subject to this system, there is no billing of Swiss VAT when ordering, and the customs clearance is entrusted to the company that delivers the parcel , for example at Swiss Post.

The principle of taxation of VAT is then the following: Swiss Customs (via postal or other) collect Swiss VAT If Swiss VAT exceeds 5 FRS: in Switzerland there are 3 VAT rates. Of these, 2 concern us: the rate of 2.5% for food base products, books, etc.) And the rate of 7.7% says "normal", for example DVDs or electronic devices.

It is therefore taxed if the order value exceeds: (5/2.5 * 100) = 200 FRS for the books (5/7.7 * 100) = 64.93 FRS for the remainder. In fact, according to the post, these values are 200 and 65 Frs: they rounded up. In addition 18 Frs of administrative fees charged by the post office, or, I believe, 35 francs if it is another company like DHL who made the clearance.

So let's take an example of this second case: if you buy for 60 Frs of DVDs, you will not be taxed at the customs, no worries. On the other hand, if you buy for 66 FRS of DVD, we will pay 66 + 18 (administrative costs) + 5.10 FRS of VAT, IE 87.10 FRS. Much less advantageous…