The influence of Chinese markets is growing, dissatisfied Czech e-shops are moving politicians – Seznam Zprávy

The market share of Internet markets, which have started to share the domestic market since last year, is estimated at more than 30 billion crowns. This means that Czechs leave up to a fifth of all spending on e-shops on marketplaces such as Temu, That’s allAliExpress, Allegro, Kaufland etc.

That’s not the only reason Czech e-shops are watching. On the ground Electronic Commerce Association has set up a campaign that points out that markets don’t always play fair. E-shops, including yes Alsa.cz, Bonami.czTrenýrkárna.cz or Datahas asked the ministries and other institutions to start solving the situation urgently.

According to the Deputy Minister of the Environment David Suré This is one of the problems with paying packing clearance fees. As a result, comes the collection system EKO-KOM with tens of millions of crowns.

“To fulfill the obligation today, the Chinese e-shop must conclude a contract with the company EKO-KOM. Imagine a Chinese company that does this, ie registers all the packaging products it puts on the Czech market. In practice, they usually avoid it, and our system is relatively toothless,” says Surý.

He said that the collection system thus loses about one percent of the two billion crowns in taxes paid. At the same time, according to him, it is not resolved as it could be Czech Environmental Survey Chinese tax evasion company fined. Hundreds of thousands of sellers from China sell to Europe through Chinese platforms.

The ministry is currently looking for a solution for people who do not pay. “We want to talk about introducing a uniform interest rate that would be paid into general systems. The simplest thing is to set a uniform rate of recycling fee based on the average weight of the package,” says Surý.

Negotiations have just begun. For example, it is not at all clear whether the obligation to pay the recycling tax would apply to the market or to the sellers themselves, or at what level the tax would be levied. apply. Surý said that the fee for package disposal may appear as part of the customs procedure, but this usually does not happen in the Czech Republic.

Tariffs are another issue raised by domestic e-shops against Chinese competition. They are troubled by the fact that Chinese platforms make extensive use of the EU legislative exemption, when they are exempt from customs duty for small shipments for natural persons up to 150 euros.

“Often they take advantage of a loophole in the legislation and don’t pay duty. We pay 40 percent duty in some sectors, no,” he said in an interview for SZ Byznys Director of e-furniture store Bonami.cz Pavel Voparil.

He took this practice as an unfair advantage. A Czech e-shop usually buys in China, with pallets or containers, any items with a unit price of up to 150 euros as “commercial goods”, which must clear customs and deduct VAT from them. The market benefits from the fact that it acts as an intermediary and that the obligation is not included in the price of the goods available for cheaper products.

“If a natural person orders goods from third countries and they are sent to him for his own use, according to current EU customs legislation, low-value shipments up to 150 euros are exempt from paying customs duty, not VAT. . So if Czech customers buy for their needs on the Chinese markets, these are the issues,” said the spokesperson Customs Administration Hana Prudičova.

Exemption from customs duties is obtained by a large number of shipments from Asia that formally go through the customs process in one of the EU member states. According to customs officials, they usually enter the country through ports of entry Netherlands a Belgium.

Therefore the Electrical Trade Association urges changes in the statutory exemption which includes the exemption of small parcels from customs duty. “It doesn’t make sense for local traders to pay duty and foreign ones not, because they are ‘hiding’ behind separate deliveries. In practice, the ship arrives in Europe in the same way as it happens when the goods are ordered by a local buyer,” says the director of the association. Jan Vetyška.

It is not clear whether the call will be heard and it is not up to domestic legislators, but above all to the European ones. It does not have to be hopeless, because freedom from customs does not concern the Czechs only. At the same time, a proposal to reform the EU customs code is currently being considered.

On the other hand, VAT must be paid for small goods from third countries. However, the money often does not end up in the Czech state budget.

According to customs officials, companies such as Shein and Temu do not pay value added tax in the Czech Republic, but to the financial authority of the member state where the goods are cleared. This is because the platforms are registered in the IOSS (Import One Stop Shop) system, which creates a single administrative point for paying VAT and customs duties.

However, according to information from SZ Byznys, the Temu marketplace is trying to pay customs duties, and therefore VAT, in the Czech Republic. So they started a meeting with the Czech Customs Administration. A representative of the Temu company did not respond to the editors’ questions regarding the collection of customs duties and VAT until the text was published.

According to the president Trade and Tourism Association Thomas Prouza The increased activity of Internet markets has been a hot topic at the meetings of the influential European business group Eurocommerce for several months, from which strong pressure on politicians can be expected.

“In addition to using the duty exemption for small shipments, we can see that Chinese companies are able to send packages at unrealistic shipping costs and possibly with some kind of logistics subsidy,” Prouza said.

He drew attention to other criticisms of European cooperation towards the markets. “Austria had hired a test company and it turned out that almost nothing passed the Chinese market. There were no instructions in German, some products were prohibited or harmful to health,” he says.

However, the speaker Francis Kotrba he said that since 2023, there are not many complaints from users about Temu and Shein platforms. Against Temu, the study registered 13 of them, with Shein, from 2022, he dealt with six applications. As for AliExpress, it has three applications from 2021.