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Selling Abroad from a UK Store: Tax, Currency and the Parts That Bite
Reviewed by: ARS Developer | Updated: 30 Sep 2026 | UK Focus: Buyer-intent SEO, web delivery, and measurable conversion growth.
Quick Summary
Opening up international shipping is a checkbox. Getting the tax, the duties and the returns right is the part that decides whether it is profitable.
In This Guide
Why This Article Is Trustworthy
- Reviewed by the ARS Developer editorial team for UK business relevance.
- Structured around buyer-intent SEO, technical delivery, and measurable conversion outcomes.
- Connected to related service pages, pricing guidance, and supporting articles for stronger topic depth.
Quick Answer
Enabling international shipping takes a minute. What costs money afterwards is tax you did not register for, parcels held at customs for missing data, and customers refusing delivery because a duty charge arrived that nobody warned them about.
The customer must not be surprised at the door
Sold on a delivered-duty-unpaid basis, an overseas customer receives a demand from the courier before they can have their parcel — often a duty charge plus a handling fee that can rival the order value. A large share simply refuse, and you pay the return leg as well as losing the sale.
The alternative is to calculate and collect duties and destination tax at checkout so the price shown is the final price. It is more work to set up and it converts considerably better, because nothing unexpected happens later.
Registration thresholds arrive sooner than expected
Selling into the EU brings destination-country VAT into play, and there are simplified schemes intended to let a non-EU seller account for it through a single registration rather than one per country. The US is different again, where sales tax obligations depend on state-level thresholds measured by revenue or transaction count.
None of this matters at ten orders a month and all of it matters at a thousand. Decide the threshold at which you will take advice, put a reminder against it, and do not discover the obligation retrospectively.
Customs data is a product data problem
Every international parcel needs a commodity code, a country of origin, an accurate description and a declared value. These are attributes of the product, so they belong in the product record where they can be maintained in bulk — not typed into a courier's form per shipment.
Getting them wrong causes delays that look to the customer like your fault. Getting them systematically wrong, particularly the declared value, causes a different and more serious kind of problem.
Price in their currency, and price deliberately
Showing prices in the visitor's currency measurably improves conversion, but a live conversion produces prices like 27.43, which reads as a foreign price converted rather than a price. Rounding to a sensible local figure looks like a store that means to sell there.
Build in a margin for exchange movement and for the provider's conversion fee. A store pricing at the mid-market rate is absorbing both, which quietly removes a chunk of the margin the international expansion was supposed to add.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I charge UK VAT on exports?
Goods exported from the UK are generally zero-rated for UK VAT, but destination-country tax may apply instead and the rules vary by market and value.
Should I collect duties at checkout?
Where the destination commonly charges them, yes. It costs more to implement and it prevents refused deliveries, which are the expensive outcome.
What is a commodity code?
A standard classification for what you are shipping, used to determine duty. It belongs on the product record so it can be maintained in bulk.
How should international returns work?
Decide before you launch. Return shipping from abroad often exceeds the item's value, and a policy written after the first request is always the expensive one.
Next Step
If international orders are being handled manually at the courier's website, that is where the errors come from. Tell us how it works now and we will suggest what to automate first.
Next Step Resources
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