As a followup, a boatload of recent and not-so-recent Customs rulings concerning Land Rovers can be found at the link below. These are rulings where someone contested the 25% levy. As can be seen, even these rulings are not consistent in their rationale. This is consistent with the experiences conveyed on this board and elsewhere by others concerning rates they were levied.
Customs Land Rover Rulings
Hey Dipodomys, thanks for posting this. We've seen that too, and lots of it is just inconsistent.
We are still disputing ours, they are still held by customs since February 27th and we are still waiting for them to review our case properly. We're on our second dispute cycle and they asked for photos of the vehicles and paperwork to prove how they ARENT 25%, but they haven't given us any reasons as to why they ARE 25%! All we had was 'you need to pay more, these are not 2.5%' and we've asked twice to specifically specify how they aren't 2.5%, what rule or code they look at etc.
Its become a joke, and I spoke to the customs officer (they aren't meant to speak to us normal humans, only the customs brokers) and he was actually quite nice but said once its flagged, it goes to a different team and you need to submit photo's as they don't see the cars themselves, only a 'flag'. So its basically a persons opinion, not a hard and fast rule, or looking at some photos of a car, vs. pulling a VIN and having an actual set of logic to use.
We are 100% in for splitting costs / doing the work needed to support this. I imagine those who are avoiding the 25% (Newark is entirely 2.5% it seems) may hate us, but its either one or the other. OR we import into Newark then ship cross country, would be cheaper!
DM us if you want to chat more,
Tks