Buying From USA?

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Peter Mcc

Member
Joined
Oct 16, 2010
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22
Location
Central BC Canada
Asking the Canadians on this site, about buying pen kits and parts etc. from the USA, do we have to pay duty, provincial, federal taxes etc?

Cheers

Peter
 
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Officially I think we're supposed to pay the HST (13%). That said I have never been charged anything on my orders, probably 10 or more, ranging in value from $100-$250.

AK
 
order under $50. are very rarely stopped by Canadian duty. Over that, and just sometimes, you have to pay GST, PST on the declared value,and $5. flatrate brookage fee. No duty taxes.
 
As the others have said, sometimes you get nailed and sometimes you don't if it is coming through the mail. If you chose UPS, Fedex, etc., then you will be paying and get dinged by their brokers for higher fees than canada Customs charges ($5.00). The taxes depend on where you are in the country but are the same as the taxes you pay at a store in your province. 12% here in BC.

 
Most of my orders are $150 to $300 and I get charged tax on those about 3/4 of the time with Canada Post. When tax is charges ,there is an $8 handling fee to Canada Post before the tax, then, sometimes I only get charged GST, most times it's the whole HST.

Don't use couriers since their handling (brokerage) fees are much higher and you get charged brokerage and tax every single time.

Some companies undervalue your order to some extent in order to minimize the price you pay. I don't know if I should name names. There is one company that has been valuing my ($200+) packages under $20 so I never have to pay any taxes + fees. Typically when I order blanks from individuals on the forum, they always have a declared value of under $20.
 
Curly said:
As the others have said, sometimes you get nailed and sometimes you don't if it is coming through the mail. If you chose UPS, Fedex, etc., then you will be paying and get dinged by their brokers for higher fees than canada Customs charges ($5.00). The taxes depend on where you are in the country but are the same as the taxes you pay at a store in your province. 12% here in BC.
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Canada post raised that $5 charge to $8 this year
 
Same experience as Curly and most everything shipped by USPS does not get charged extra. UPS brokerage is a canadian licence to steal, Fed Ex is a little better and DHL is about the best in my experience having to use a Courier.
 
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SCR0LL3R said:
Curly said:
As the others have said, sometimes you get nailed and sometimes you don't if it is coming through the mail. If you chose UPS, Fedex, etc., then you will be paying and get dinged by their brokers for higher fees than canada Customs charges ($5.00). The taxes depend on where you are in the country but are the same as the taxes you pay at a store in your province. 12% here in BC.


Canada post raised that $5 charge to $8 this year
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As I know this charge it is the brokerage fee charged by the CBSA not to Canadian Postal Service. I have been known to be incorrect though!
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Sometimes charged , particularly on pen kits , almost never on wood . HOWEVER , yesterday I received the donation drawing prize from Jonathon - 20 of his excellent castings . He had declared them as a gift (which I think would be technically correct) with a value of $10 (perhaps a minor fudge) . Customs dinged me $8.50 plus 5% GST on an assumed Cdn value of $159.89 , which at their quoted exchange rate of 0.9993 works back to exactly $8/blank .

There are several implications to this . (1) Canada Customs has a mole within the IAP !
(2) Classification No 3923909090 -Plastic , Articles of , is dutiable . Any plastic raw material , not just finished product made from plastic . (3) Cross border blank exchanges such as the casting ones will become punitively expensive if we get dinged on every blank that comes to us , whether we keep it or not .

I suppose there is some kind of process for appealing these decisions , but sometimes it is better to let sleeping bureaucrats lie . As mentioned by several , many shipments come through without attracting tax , even though they technically should .

Thoughts ?
 
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Thanks for the info guys, because I cannot find any sources in Canada for the pen/pencil parts that I need I will be making an order from the US, and will only deal with those that ship USPS.

once again thanks.

cheers
Peter
 
1080Wayne said:
Sometimes charged , particularly on pen kits , almost never on wood . HOWEVER , yesterday I received the donation drawing prize from Jonathon - 20 of his excellent castings . He had declared them as a gift (which I think would be technically correct) with a value of $10 (perhaps a minor fudge) . Customs dinged me $8.50 plus 5% GST on an assumed Cdn value of $159.89 , which at their quoted exchange rate of 0.9993 works back to exactly $8/blank .

There are several implications to this . (1) Canada Customs has a mole within the IAP !
(2) Classification No 3923909090 -Plastic , Articles of , is dutiable . Any plastic raw material , not just finished product made from plastic . (3) Cross border blank exchanges such as the casting ones will become punitively expensive if we get dinged on every blank that comes to us , whether we keep it or not .

I suppose there is some kind of process for appealing these decisions , but sometimes it is better to let sleeping bureaucrats lie . As mentioned by several , many shipments come through without attracting tax , even though they technically should .

Thoughts ?
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The other and likely possibility is they searched Jonathan's name and found that Exotics sell his blanks and assigned a price based on that or used another site to base the price of cast resin blanks that looked similar. If the declared value had been say $40 total then they likely would have used that value if they bothered at all.

That is the risk taken when the declared value is too low.
 
I have paid up to $38.00 from Smitty's for HST and customs fees and I have now found it all depends on the size of the box. Small flat rate mail don't seem to get charged anything. So much for NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) Oh sorry that only applies to multi nationals.:biggrin:

Lin.
 
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