May 13, 2004

Curious George I'm having some problems with customs charges that i don't want to pay. I bought an item on ebay and it had to cross the boarder into Canada. Anyone know any loopholes on how I can get out of this?

I bought a DJ mixer for $220 american on ebay and asked the guy to mark it as a gift in order to avoid the shipping charges. I'm in Canada. I got a bill from UPS for $78 for customs charges and taxes. It said that the gift allowance for this item was only $60 which is crazy as its worth a lot more than that. The guy told me that UPS told him that since it was insured the fees couldn't be waived, which doesn't make much sense to me. Also, how can my government charge me sales tax on an item that wasn't purchased from this country? How does this gift thing work then? The arbitraryness of this rule seems odd if the charges are only enforced some of the time. It seems like a big scam to me. I assume these rules are in place to prevent companies from shipping large amounts of goods across the boarder but what about the little guy?? I really can not afford these extra charges right now, any help is much appreciated.

posted by Fred Wesley 20 years ago
  • i've long known about the gouge that is importation by mail, and it has made me reconsider many an ebay purchase. they can something like 45% to an electronics-type thing if they want to. the unfortunate fact is, $60 is the most something can be worth for the gift allowance to apply, period (found that out on the confusing customs canada web site). i don't know if this would really work, but what i would do is be dishonest and claim that the mixer is broken and therefore worthless, and lie about the price you paid for it. say that you bought it for $15, and it doesn't work, and you're just going to rip it apart for the electronic components or something. but now that i think about it, if you had the shipping insured, the value is well known to them, so it's not possible to lie at this point. sorry, i think you just got unlucky.
  • ps, i hope i'm not accidentally misinforming you
  • next time, have it cross the border instead. boarders are notoriously greedy. slaps self
  • can something like this be avoided in the future by marking the value of the package lower? but does that then screw you out of insurance if the package is lost/damaged?
  • sutureself is right. You are allowed to send items valued at $60CDN per day as "unsolicited gifts" with no duty payable. GST/PST is still levied. Value of goods are determined buy the price paid (transaction value), or by declared value - ie you can have the sender put a value on the item. There are some other duty loopholes - most notably Free Trade. If an item is made in the USA, Mexico, Chile or Israel it may be eligible for low or no duty in many cases.I bought a US made custom exaust for my car and paid no duty. Still had to pay GST tho.
  • well the goods were definitely made in the US, how do I go about getting a Free Trade loophole happening?