What are the EU VAT collection gaps for DHgate parcels?

Why

• Collection at the point of sale depends on the seller being registered and on the shipment carrying the identifier that proves it. When the identifier is absent the parcel carries no marker showing tax was paid, so the import route applies by default. Nobody asks the buyer whether the sale was meant to be covered, because the shipment either carries the record or it does not, and the buyer cannot add it afterwards.
• The low-value band holds most consumer parcels and is also where the collection duty was placed on the seller rather than on the border. That is the source of the gap: the obligation moved upstream while the enforcement point stayed at the border, so an unregistered seller produces a parcel that is lawful to dispatch and assessable on arrival, with nothing in between to catch the difference. The buyer experiences the gap as a charge that arrives without warning and cannot be traced to any decision they made, while the seller experiences it as a form filled in the way it is always filled in. Neither party is looking at the same rule, which is why two accounts of one parcel rarely match.
• National practice diverges at the edges. Member states treat documentary proof, the inclusion of shipping charges and the order in which tax and duty are calculated differently, so two parcels of identical value entering through different points can generate different demands. The rate this desk models for the core EU band is a standard rate applied to goods plus freight, and it is a planning figure rather than a quote for your parcel.
• Protection is documentary rather than procedural. Keep the order record showing whether tax was collected, the payment record, and the shipment label if the carrier photographed it. Those three let you show that a demand is either new or a duplicate, which is the only question a carrier can act on while the parcel is still in its hands and before the money has been handed over. After release the same question turns into a refund request, which takes longer and depends on the carrier's own goodwill rather than on a published rule. While the parcel is held, the holder still has a reason to check a record that contradicts the demand. Once the charge is paid and the parcel is delivered, the same evidence is used to argue for a refund from an organisation that has already finished its part of the job, and the incentive to look at it has gone. Timing is part of the evidence rather than a separate detail.

When this answer flips

• The order record shows tax collected at the point of sale, because a later demand is then a duplicate and the carrier can usually be shown the record before payment is made.
• The consignment sits above the low-value band, because the import route applies in any case and the collection question never arises for that shipment.
• The parcel forms part of a consolidated commercial consignment for a business importer, because the declaration and the liability then sit with that importer's own records rather than with a doorstep payment.

Three things to do next

1. Estimate the EU duty and VAT band
2. Read the UK version of this question
3. See the full landed-cost waterfall