Booo I say boooooo.
Would be nice to see some EU competitions but laws makes it hard. I proposed this to a scope manufacturer who was holding contests on facebook.
Have a contest where the price is a discount code, be it 50-90%. This way you can offer the contest to every country you can sell to.
So instead of the price being a M4 Impact the price is a discount code to buy one with a 50-90% discount, once you win you'd have 1 week or agreed upon time to use it or it goes to the next person in line. I live in Finland and if the discount was 90% I'd just have to pay 24% (25.5% after September 1st because they are increasing VAT) on the $360 + shipping. $360 (90% discount) + around $200 shipping +24%.
I'd gladly pay $695 for a $3600 rifle. Not everyone would like a contest like this but afaik it's legal everywhere. There is no purchase needed to enter and taxes should be based on price paid and not price value. It's not a perfect solution and I don't know if you could offer a 99.99% off with free shipping price.
Or has others tried this and the US has regulations against it? It does look like a system that could be exploited?
I pay VAT when I import an airgun and then VAT when I sell it, I could sell it for whatever (unless there is a MSRP I have to follow) and the VAT would reflect the price. So the tax office gets their share regardless of what I sell it for.
I don't know about other countries but at least in Finland you pay import tax on the price you paid for general goods, cars on the other hand has an average value you pay tax on. So you could buy a completely demolished Lambo for $5000 but you would have to pay import tax as if it was valued at $100-200 000.
Then again I understand that there would be problems if there was problems with the rifle, a US person could easily send it back for repair but EU people would have to send it to their local gunsmith, FX representative or FX themselves and it would be at their own cost.
If I was rich I'd hold some contests from my business for the EU members but I'm pretty much broke, spent all my savings starting my store.
Sorry this is a bit off topic but someone might like the idea.