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@unxetas
I hate paying tax mostly because it goes towards the governments bank account, but it is pretty fair. Customs and Taxes are pretty much the reason why it's so expensive to buy anything locally.. We can't really expect to label stuff as "gifts", knowing full well that they aren't, and be exempt from paying the same taxes that bike shops (through the distributors..) have to pay!
That said, here's what I used to do. I learned pretty early that marking stuff as gift did pretty much nothing - it's the value that counts, and they won't take $0 for value that easily. Since I usually paid stuff through paypal, I just copied the receipt into notepad, and edited the value of items to be less than what they'd be able to tax. So I got away with fairly expensive small items by changing the receipt to read "bolts and bearings - $2.95".
This worked back in Portugal as the buyer was responsible for paying the customs shit directly and providing proof of item's cost. What might work here in the UK, providing you get a sympathetic seller/friend with a convenient US address, is getting him to include an edited copy of the receipt inside the item's box - they'll open it, check the receipt and send it your way. Hopefully. :)