Customs fee when shipping from the US to Canada? Anyone heard of this?

artistlost · October 9, 2009 5:04AM

Has anyone ever heard of a customs fee that the sender needs to pay when shipping a small bubble envelope 1st class from the US to Canada? I have a seller that says it will cost them postage $1.23 and then an additional $3.50 for customs fees for them to ship to me in Canada. In all my years I have never heard of this?

thanks

mathew

ColleSystem · October 9, 2009 5:05AM

They are wrong. They will not be charged any export customs fees, period.

-scott

storm888 · October 9, 2009 5:20AM

<< <i>Has anyone ever heard of a customs fee that the sender needs to pay when shipping a small bubble envelope 1st class from the US to Canada? I have a seller that says it will cost them postage $1.23 and then an additional $3.50 for customs fees for them to ship to me in Canada. In all my years I have never heard of this?

thanks

mathew >>

/////////////////////////////////////

Your sender is either ignorant of the facts OR is trying to
collect a little bit more money from you. Maybe both.

Customs Fees - if there are any - are NOT paid to the seller.
Such fees are paid to the govt of the buyer BY the buyer.

Such sellers need to learn how to simply say:

"I charge more to ship to Canada."

artistlost · October 9, 2009 5:23AM

Thanks Storm,

I was 99.9% positive about that but thought they may have introduced something new or there in the US

mathew

vladguerrero · October 9, 2009 6:40AM

BS

1989FleerBillRipkencollector · October 9, 2009 6:53AM

It's his "Custom" fee for filling out those ever so hard custom forms. You know, name, address, contents, ugh. Such a HEADACHE. lol

scooperqpr · October 9, 2009 1:40PM

I got a box of cards for swaps I got a customs bill for $75!! I live in Canadian and the cards come up from the States. I paid the $75 went to the customs and told them the story. I filled in a form and a month later I got a cheque back from Revenue Canada. They charge me Provisional service tax and General service tax, on the value of the cards. I asked them where they got their prices from and they said they guessed!! The taxes are about 10% so they valued the junkers box at $750!!!!!
So if your buyer paid a customs fee he CAN claim it back.

Beezer12 · October 9, 2009 3:06PM

It's a common misconception that custom fees are applied to trading cards when they are actually exempt. What we do get charged for at the border is provincial and federal sales taxes which vary depending on the Province you reside. For myself it's 13%, which is obviously the cause of the requests by many Canadian ebayers for US sellers to fudge the declared value of the merchandise on the customs sticker to save a bit or avoid altogether the taxes. The tax is paid when picking up your mail at the post office as it isn't delivered when it has tax owing.
Customs has a daily tax free allowance which is something like $20-25 in merch value but in my experience they tend to apply the tax grab when merchandise values get to the $100 range but it probably depends on how busy they are too. Grading companies must declare very clearly on the shipping forms that cards from Canada are being returned to the original owner and therefore are exempt from sales tax since they weren't purchased in the US, regardless of declared value for insurance purposes.
If a US seller isn't insuring an item, putting the actual sales price on the custom form aside from being the honest thing to do, only ends up costing the buyer some extra cash for our gov's general revenue.
And I also agree that the Customs folks don't have time to pore over price guides, in my experience they have always accepted whatever the seller states the value to be. They don't seem intent to penalize you for getting a good deal on something like cards that don't have well known or accepted retail prices anyways.

vladguerrero · October 9, 2009 4:03PM

<< <i>It's a common misconception that custom fees are applied to trading cards when they are actually exempt. What we do get charged for at the border is provincial and federal sales taxes which vary depending on the Province you reside. For myself it's 13%, which is obviously the cause of the requests by many Canadian ebayers for US sellers to fudge the declared value of the merchandise on the customs sticker to save a bit or avoid altogether the taxes. The tax is paid when picking up your mail at the post office as it isn't delivered when it has tax owing.
Customs has a daily tax free allowance which is something like $20-25 in merch value but in my experience they tend to apply the tax grab when merchandise values get to the $100 range but it probably depends on how busy they are too. Grading companies must declare very clearly on the shipping forms that cards from Canada are being returned to the original owner and therefore are exempt from sales tax since they weren't purchased in the US, regardless of declared value for insurance purposes.
If a US seller isn't insuring an item, putting the actual sales price on the custom form aside from being the honest thing to do, only ends up costing the buyer some extra cash for our gov's general revenue.
And I also agree that the Customs folks don't have time to pore over price guides, in my experience they have always accepted whatever the seller states the value to be. They don't seem intent to penalize you for getting a good deal on something like cards that don't have well known or accepted retail prices anyways. >>

You guys are missing the point here, the seller wants to be paid for this... not the importer.

nightcrawler · October 9, 2009 4:17PM

<< <i>You guys are missing the point here, the seller wants to be paid for this... not the importer. >>

Whatever the seller thinks is going on is no big deal. A bubble mailer from the US for $4.73 isn't bad.

Sportsamerica · October 9, 2009 10:07PM

I have been able to get bubble mailers for under 3.00 to Canada.. and that is for 2 graded cards...

Customs fee when shipping from the US to Canada? Anyone heard of this?

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