[peebles16]

Anyone heard of insurance premuim tax(IPT) being levied on goods shipped to NZ. Quote from letton percival is 1.6% plus 5% IPT of value of goods shipped - is this standard?? Yes I know it's Christmas Eve but still trying to gets stuff organised :uhoh

Thanks
Karenx

[IanW99]

Anyone heard of insurance premuim tax(IPT) being levied on goods shipped to NZ. Quote from letton percival is 1.6% plus 5% IPT of value of goods shipped - is this standard?? Yes I know it's Christmas Eve but still trying to gets stuff organised :uhoh

Thanks
Karenx

IPT is standard for all insurance policies in the UK and is a Tax on premiums (read this as yet another stealth tax).

So yes it is standard and also fixed at 5% (no point in shopping around as this is government controlled).

The way that you have worded the charges is a little misleading letton percival premiums are worked out as 1.6% of the value of the goods shipped, you then need to apply a 5% IPT to the value of this premium.

Ian

[peebles16]

Ahh now it makes sense - what would we do without you Ian

Cheers and have a wonderful Christmas!
Karen

[pipipudel]

Hi Karen
We have arranged our insurance with Kay International at 1 %. Packers are booked for 27 and 28 of December. We are flying out on the 31st not much of a Christmas for us. Nevertheless, Happy Christmas to all of you.

[Caroline and Dave]

Hi,
We are insuring with Orbit Protect. They have told us there is no IPT to pay as they are a NZ based company.

http://www.orbitprotect.com/Marine/default.asp

Dave and Caroline

[IanW99]

Hi,
We are insuring with Orbit Protect. They have told us there is no IPT to pay as they are a NZ based company.

http://www.orbitprotect.com/Marine/default.asp

Dave and Caroline

From what I can see from the HM Revenues & Customs website regarding a company such as orbitprotect - "you are receiving, or you intend to receive, taxable premiums in relation to risks located in the UK" then they would also be liable to charge IPT.

And for a customer "taken out by a person in the UK by mail order, post, telephone or the Internet are regarded as taken out in the UK, regardless of where the insurer or broker is based." and the person is "habitually resident in the UK at the time the contract is entered into", would mean that they would need to pay IPT.

So, if you are currently in the UK, I would expect you to have to pay IPT regardless of where you find the cheapest insurance.

Of course, if you are resident in NZ before you ship your personal belongings then you may be able to avoid it?

Ian

[Caroline and Dave]

Hi Ian,
It may be something to do with the fact that we are already resident in NZ as you say but we definetly are not being charged IPT.


Dave and Caroline

[Caroline and Dave]

From what I can see from the HM Revenues & Customs website regarding a company such as orbitprotect - "you are receiving, or you intend to receive, taxable premiums in relation to risks located in the UK" then they would also be liable to charge IPT.

And for a customer "taken out by a person in the UK by mail order, post, telephone or the Internet are regarded as taken out in the UK, regardless of where the insurer or broker is based." and the person is "habitually resident in the UK at the time the contract is entered into", would mean that they would need to pay IPT.

So, if you are currently in the UK, I would expect you to have to pay IPT regardless of where you find the cheapest insurance.

Of course, if you are resident in NZ before you ship your personal belongings then you may be able to avoid it?

Ian

We have now had this responce from Orbit Protect and as you can see they do not charge anyone IPT

Hello Caroline,

Thank you for contacting us.

The insurance you would be purchasing from us complies with local (NZ) insurance requirements. So the rate of 2.2% is the total you pay.
The UK insurance market has its local requirements but they do not have an impact on us.
I trust this helps?
Thank you again.
Kind regards,

This was from the General Manager

So unless the Uk Govt is going to tax us directly then all we have to pay is 2.2%

[IanW99]

We have now had this responce from Orbit Protect and as you can see they do not charge anyone IPT

Hello Caroline,

Thank you for contacting us.

The insurance you would be purchasing from us complies with local (NZ) insurance requirements. So the rate of 2.2% is the total you pay.
The UK insurance market has its local requirements but they do not have an impact on us.
I trust this helps?
Thank you again.
Kind regards,

This was from the General Manager

So unless the Uk Govt is going to tax us directly then all we have to pay is 2.2%

Very much doubt the UK Govt will try to tax you for IPT.

The way that I understand it is that if any company provides any insurance cover for UK (and part of your shipping would start in UK) then they are obliged to charge IPT, regardless of where they are based (and it is specific about this i.e. they include overseas based companies). HM Revenue could force them to charge it or at least pay as if they had.

It is interesting to note that your percentage appears to be higher than if you went with Letton Percival including IPT?

Still it may be worth forum members contacting them for quotes?

Ian

[peebles16]

Yep Ian that was my (okay it took me a while to get there :) ) understanding of IPT - in the UK, insurance policy tax and pay 5% of premium. Also good observation of the difference in percentage our's was 1.6% significantly lower than 2.2%

Karenx

[Caroline and Dave]

We got quoted 1.6% too from Letton percival but when we enquired a bit further we found out the excess was 500 pounds,this maybe because we have 2 containers coming over. They would not insure anything that was self packed. They wanted 45 pounds to cover electrical derrangement and another 45 pounds for mould damage etc all of which was included with Orbit plus they would cover us for 60 days storage which LP wanted extra for and were unable to tell us how much. All in all it probably works out the same. They offered us an upgrade in the insurance with only 100 pounds excess but this would have meant a 2.8% charge.
The funny thing was Orbit phoned us this afternoon re the address of our storage firm in NZ so I had a long chat re not paying the IPT and they said they have done this policy for many years and never charged it and insisted it did not apply. So we had better get our stuff over here before they change their minds.
At the end of the day its down to who you feel happy with but I thought it best to inform you of what we were told

All the best

Dave and Caroline

[aberdian]

Think I'll give Letton Percival a shout - our shippers quoted us 3.15% of shipment value as their insurance premium. Quite a difference methinks.

[peebles16]

Letton Percival great service this end and very quick even though we left it pretty late. Documents all through yesterday and packers here today - yikes!!
Best of luck
Karen