Christmas and New Year orders at Fighting 15s

The Fighting 15s shop remains open over Christmas 2020 and the New Year. Orders will be processed pretty much every day, particularly as there seems little risk that family activities will interfere, what with everyone else in our family being on the mainland or in Sweden. With a link to the outside world involving trips by plague boat, plague train or plague aeroplane, Janet and I will be staying firmly here. We can but hope Christmas Day will be as glorious as it was last year, when we threw UK seasonal tradition to the winds and simply had a barbecue on the beach.

We expect all mail and courier services to be overworked this year, because of the pandemic and an expected increased workload as everyone tries to organise Christmas by post, and accordingly, we recommend that all UK customers submit their orders by Monday 7 December 2020 to stand a reasonable chance of figures arriving in time for the big day. Other customers should probably order by the end of November. Although we will do out best, however, we cannot guarantee an order will arrive in time for Christmas.

There is one nasty fly in the ointment of seasonal good cheer, and that’s the border tax changes resulting from the UK leaving the EU at the end of the year. Because Fighting 15s is registered for VAT, this means we will have to close the shop to EU customers for a period so that we can make changes to how tax works for them. We simply don’t want to risk an EU order being charged VAT by the shop before 1 January 2021 but arriving after that date and the customer being charged tax again. So customers in the EU will not be able to place orders online in the Fighting 15s shop from Monday 14 December 2020 to Friday 1 January 2021 because shipping options to the region will be disabled. This is a temporary limitation: as soon as we can on 1 January, new year hangover permitting, we will set up the shop to deduct tax for EU customers. Customers in the UK and worldwide customers outside the EU are unaffected and will be able to order normally during this time.

After that, the next Brexit headache arrives on 1 July 2021, when the pandemic-delayed EU changes to border tax come into force. These will remove the current 15 euro tax exemption threshold from all shipments arriving in the EU. The UK has the same rules coming into play, removing the current £18 tax exemption threshold, but on 1 January 2021, because Brexit means it is unable to delay them, pandemic or no pandemic. But more on the EU changes nearer the time.

Ian
Fighting 15s and Gladiator Miniatures