Sending stuff to the US

madcamel · Oct 27, 2006

Hi all,

Let's say I want to ship a cellular phone to my friend who lives in the US (I'm located outside of the US).
It's an expensive phone - about $800.

Will my friend have to pay duty on this shipment ?
Does the US customs check every package that comes in or is it something random?

I tried searching for "cellular phones" in http://dataweb.usitc.gov/scripts/gsp/gsp_tariff.asp but couldn't find anything ... could it be that cellphones are duty free ?

Thanks
Idan

Dale Hubbard · Oct 27, 2006

Yes on the duty, and yes to a serious extent on the checking. Otherwise you might just be lucky, but as it's an electronic device, the chances are that it will be discovered.

RazorNF · Oct 27, 2006

I'm in Canada, and I've bought stuff from ebay before, where depending on the item, international shippers sometimes mark the customs declartion as "gift" and even "0" for value which is quite the stretch and can raise some eyebrows. - For me I'd say I've been lucky and only pay duty/gst about half the time.

But then again, we have NAFTA with the US, and I still don't know what's covered under this agreement...

Theo · Oct 27, 2006

At the country of origin you will have to declare the item and its value, even if it's a gift. At the country of arrival, the customs do monitor content, originating country and declared value. Items do get checked and scanned for content. By declaring a small value to your item, you are risking it getting lost (or even, stolen) without any traceable option. So it's a catch-22.