I have never paid any tax on anything I ever bought in china, or HK and that includes hundreds of small things as well as a bunch of large things. Like battery terminals, flux, Rc Receivers etc. Small things can be 2 to 30 pounds.
Large things can be £117 (my new soldering iron from aliexpress and its already arrived! in 5 days) to a Nikon Z8 camera body to replace the one I sold at around £2.3K a couple of years ago.
Tax? Customs? Not in 30 years.
From the USA you tend to get charged by customs around every 2nd or 3rd item ordered. Depends on shipping company. Dont use USP or UK Post Office! If you get charged customs charges its usually 20% VAT on the "estimated" cost of the item, plus around £3 to £7 "charges" by a delivery company whatever that might be for!

Unless shipped as low value or used, or whatever. And then generally its free.
From the EU say spain or germany, poland etc (my carer ordered a gearbox for his 4x4) I ordered some new hobby parts from spain recently never any customs or VAT charges at all. Same from all of Oceana countries inc Australia. £0 over the last 30 years in charges.