Canadian Transformers News and Discussion Forum

[QuadESL63]

If you ship by courier (UPS, FedEx, etc.) and you will always be charged the sales tax on the declared value no matter it is $10 or $1000 (if your non-toy item(s) deem a duty you will also be charged accordingly in addition to the sales tax) because the brokerage firm(s) that handles the custom filing automatically do that according to the law. If you ship the cheapest courier option such as UPS Ground (or whatever it is now called) you will get a heavy brokeage fees because it is not being included in the shipping cost.

If you ship by postal services (e.g. USPS Priority, EMS, etc.) and the declared value is less than or even around $100 you will most probably won't get taxed. I have heard the reason is that the cost for Border Service to process your case is way more than $100 per package. Don't know if it is a fact. If the declared value is over you will most probably be charged with a $10 brokeage fees by CanadaPost and the sales tax by the government on the declared value. There were expensive shipments where they didn't charge me anything (e.g. a $600 turntable tonearm or one of my $800+ BBTS pile of loot for instance). But generally speaking they are pretty good at taxing you with anything >$100 these days. Also, marking the declared value down may not be the optimal solution: I guess this may work with toys and figures where they don't care that much but on other items such as electronics, etc. the Border Service may charge you sales tax on the a fair market value price instead of the declared value (even if you did bought the item in question at the lower price point in which case you have a way to prove your case and get the over-charged sales tax back).

Marking it as gift doesn't work. They only look at the item and the declared value. Don't even bother. And not all sellers and stores will mark the declared value down for you based on various reasons like insurance claim. Filling in the declaration form with fuzzy and unrealistic information may result in Border Service taking their time to examine your shipment which means delay.