In my experience, most stuff over the £15 threshold slips through the net without being taxed. Chinese sellers seem to have a knack for it. Paying VAT seems to

In my experience, most stuff over the £15 threshold slips through the net without being taxed. Chinese sellers seem to have a knack for it. Paying VAT seems to be the exception rather than the rule. If you're getting started in electronics, I'd suggest buying mixed value kits of common passive components. They're really cheap and very handy to have around. If you work with SMD components, these sample books are a huge timesaver: https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=sample+book https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=sample+book PCBs from China are cheap enough that I haven't etched my own boards in years: http://pcbshopper.com/ http://pcbshopper.com/ Aoyue and Yihua make very cheap and surprisingly usable soldering tools. You can get a perfectly acceptable temperature-controlled soldering iron or hot air gun for about £25. You might as well stock up on solder, flux and wick too. Taobao is a bit of a crapshoot if you can't read Chinese, but it's where you'll find the really insane bargains and the sexy new chips. There are a variety of English-speaking agents who can buy stuff for you for a reasonable fee. Dangerous Prototypes have a useful forwarding service - have stuff delivered to their office and they'll send it on to you for $3 per parcel plus the cost of shipping. http://dangerousprototypes.com/store/china_forwarding http://dangerousprototypes.com/store/china_forwarding