privateer highwaymen (or: Postnord’s licensed grift)

So the one big downside for you, dear reader, of my no longer being on social media, is that when this happens I’ve got nowhere else to vent my utter fury and contempt.


Observe this letter informing me that someone has sent me a parcel containing a book from the UK:

The import VAT, that’s fair enough; 12 kronor, which is about £1. I genuinely don’t mind paying that.

What sticks in my craw, to the point of actual apoplectic hissing and yelling every time this happens, is the bit where Postnord claim TEN TIMES THE IMPORT VAT FOR THE TERRIBLE AND EXHAUSTING LABOUR OF THEIR EXTRACTING IT FROM ME, of which 20% is itself VAT on said service.

I end up paying more in VAT for the process of being charged VAT than the VAT I’m being charged.

TEN TIMES THE FUCKING TAX.

I’m amazed Postnord’s reps could keep a straight face when they put this deal in front of the government. It’s literal highway robbery, a licensed shakedown that insults the intelligence of everyone involved, but particularly the state itself. If your monopolist tax collector tells you that they’re going to have to levy a handling fee ten times the size of the tax on small imports like this, then either your monopolist tax collector is severely taking the piss, or you’re chasing pointlessly small fragments of tax to no good purpose, or both.


Still think Sweden’s some sort of socialist utopia and model for sane governance? I invite you to think again.

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2 responses to “privateer highwaymen (or: Postnord’s licensed grift)”

  1. Pete ashton avatar

    Same in the UK, post-Brexit. VAT used to be charged at source, now it’s managed by the post office on behalf of HMRC and they charge to send these dumbass letters, like it’s some weird freakish anomaly that we’re importing the same thing we did last month and have done for the last decade. It seems to be set up in the hope that one day this “importing goods” malarky will just go away.

  2. Ian Sales avatar
    Ian Sales

    I’ve been charged a fee of 76 crowns by Postnord for an importmoms of 0 crowns.

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