Have you ever had to pay to receive a gift in Spain sent from family and friends back in your home country? Here’s what the rules actually say, what is happening in reality and what you can do instead.
I recently received a birthday gift from my in-laws and was told that I had to pay over €10 in customs tax for an item worth €15, where the amount was clearly labelled, as was the fact that it was a gift.
This is definitely not the first time this has happened to me, so I decided to look into what the rules actually say.
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According to the Spanish Treasury website, Law 37/1992, Article 36, and European Union Regulation EC 1186/2009, Articles 23 to 26, shipments between private individuals as gifts are exempt from all duties unless the value of the goods exceeds €45. The exception is meant to be when the gift includes alcoholic products, perfumes, tobacco or tobacco products.
In reality though, this isn’t happening. People are being charged to receive items much less than €45, even when they are a gift.
The item in question was worth only €15 and it was a t-shirt, not any of the items mentioned above.
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In fact, there is a whole Facebook page dedicated to people in Spain complaining about aduanas (customs) charges called Afectados por Correosaduanas.es y Grupo Correos.
One person posted that they bought an item from Aliexpress for €10 for scrapbooking material and they had to pay €18 for customs duties.
Another wrote: “I received two books from the UK (€13 order total) with an additional €7 charge”.
One more person said they had received some chocolates as a gift from the UK. The sender declared a value of £10 (roughly €12) and they were charged €7.53 to receive them.
Every day there seems to be a new post on the group complaining about the unfair charges.
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The Spanish post office website – Correos states: “If you are expecting an international shipment, remember that all goods, even those purchased online, may be subject to restrictions, as well as the payment of customs and handling fees by Correos depending on their content, value and other criteria that Customs applies to shipments”.
So while you may not be paying customs fees, you be paying extra handling fees to do with postage, insurance or freight charges, for example.
Spain Box postal service agrees, saying that “The import duties and taxes payable are calculated on the value of the imported goods, plus the cost of importing them (transport and insurance)”.
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It can definitely be a blow to have to pay out to receive gifts from family and friends back home, particularly if it’s an occasion like your birthday.
No matter how many times you tell some friends and family not to send you anything though, someone usually does and you end up paying for it.
So, here are some alternatives you can give them if they still want to buy you a present:
Tell them to buy you something from Amazon.es
Yes, we know they won’t be supporting local businesses, and the item may not be something from your home country, but it will save you having to pay for it. If they have an Amazon account in their home country, they can simply use the same log in details and passwords on the Spanish site and order you something from there. As long as they’re ordering something from an EU country (which most items listed will be), you won’t have to pay anything to receive it.
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Tell them to use Etsy
A better alternative is to get them to buy something from Etsy, a global online marketplace full of artists selling a range of unique gifts from jewellery to wood carvings. They can simply select Spanish or EU sellers only if they want to you to avoid importation duties from countries outside the EU.
Tell them to buy from other Spanish shops
There are many Spanish shops with an online presence such as El Corte Inglés, Natura store, Fnac etc. The websites will mainly be in Spanish and they’ll have to pay in Euros, which will mean a small conversion fee for them, but again you won’t be charged customs duties to receive the items.
Tell them to buy you gift cards or experiences
This way there is no physical item they need to send you, you can simply buy what you want or use your experience. The only thing they need to do is to make sure the experience is available in Spain or that the company the gift card is from sells in Spain.
