Hi

I am living in zurich and planning to support one of my friend's business(from Singapore). This is purely buying cosmetic commodity from Singapore and handover to Swiss customer. Due to various reasons he can't directly send the products to Customer, so it will be sent to my address first and then sent to customer. The invoice will be addressed to customer ONLY, not me. However I am receiving the products I am bit worried whether I have to pay any local tax(other than customs duty) or I have to declare to any authorities etc. What are all the legal procedure I have to follow?

If you have similar experience or you have some better idea what to do, then please share it with me.

Thank you.

It looks like you are acting as an importer and would therefore have to setup some sort of business or one-man operation to reflect this. Tax would have to be paid etc.

For cosmetics you may even need a license or special permission, I'm not sure.

I don't think this will be as easy as you think.

Am just wondering how it is he can send the products to you at your Swiss address but not to a Swiss based customer? What am I missing here?

Maybe just trying to save on shipping costs by lumping different orders together....or maybe something really sinister.

Thanks Nigel and am hoping it's the former...

Like having the receiver pay for all Duty, VAT and handling charges... can be quite a handful for cosmetic products...! Not something I would do without a company set-up...

first mistake - helping a friend in a business, can only lead to tears

as others have said you will be liable for import duty etc, anything nasty in the parcels and they will come knocking on your door, any fake goods and again you'll be the one with the huge bill (or what they consider to be fake)

on top of that the customers could also be giving you grief, not what they ordered, took too long etc etc etc, very big grief

switzerland has some weird and wonderful import duties (eg potatoes at some stupid huge duty wasn't it 4000%??)

really unless your mate is paying you big $$$$$ for this favour then I wouldn't be touching it with a barge pole.

There are various reasons why I am supporting,

1. Save money in transport cost.
2. Communication constraints(language)
3. If the goods are damaged/faked, then I will not deliver at customer at all as this cost would be managed by my Friend (sender from Singapore) - so no risk also maintain customers.
4. If the business grows well, then I will be involved with proper business set-up.

However I want to see the potential of the market before I invest to have a proper set-up. So you can call it as a pilot business.

if the goods are fake then you'll get a nice big bill from customs with a note telling you they have destroyed them, and they grass you to the trademark owner, who'll also bill you.

see
My fake Louis Vuitton contraband was seized at Geneva Airport's Customs

helping someone out like this always backfires, you are taking all the risk, not your mate, the bills will come to you, not him.

and not being funny here, but just how many swiss people are going to buy cheap cosmetics from singapore??

I did it the other way round to you a few years ago, a mate in the uk wanted me to ship him as many nintendo wii's and ds's as I could get (he owns game distribution co. in the uk) and even though he setup dhl coming to pick them up every couple of days and did bank transfers etc etc and we agreed beforehand that any DOA's where his tough luck it was still grief, grief buying them, packing them, waiting for dhl, checking bank transfers, filling in customs forms etc and still having him moan when deliveries where late, somthing was missing, a box was damaged etc etc, it would also have been quite difficult to explain all the large amounts of money that where going in and out of my account should anyone have come sniffing around.