On 16 Mar 2000, at 9:21, Alex Barclay wrote:

> that you pay VAT on the CIF (Consignement, Insurance, Freight) charges
> when all added up. It can really suck sometimes. The are two ways to
> get around this.

Hi,

here in Austria one pays VAT for CIF according to the submitted 
bill, that means if the sender includes shipping and handling cost in 
his bill than taxes are calculated from that sum, if it is not included, 
they calculate taxes upon what the shipping cost were if sent from 
the destination country to the senders country (in one case here in 
Austria I was envolved, shipping from the US was 19.95USD, the 
same shipping from Austria to the US had cost 120,-- USD).

mike