[WTB] Help With Shipping from US to Canada Border Fees

[backpack]

I live in Southern Ontario.
My Buddy lives in California.
I'm wanting to buy his old computer off him.
Now it is a really good computer and would retail around $1000.
He's willing to sell it to me quite cheap and I was figuring maybe add $100 to that for shipping.

WAIT A MINUTE... forgot all about taxes and duty costs at the border.
So now I'm like well so what's that? $100 for shipping and $130 for tax at the border?
Or am I missing something and am going to get stuck paying way more than that.

Could anyone with experience in these matters please help me.
It would be greatly appreciated!

[_dangtx_]

well, depending what carrier he choses....


usps/canada post would be the one to go.

so basically you pay both taxes + some handling fee, which could be 10-15 bucks.

now, the important part is the value. if he marks it as 150$ and they bite, then thats fine. but if they

pull the catalog price? youre done for amigo

[tragd]

Pretty sure you won't need to pay taxes unless he's running a store and that's where you are buying it from.

[ADay2Long]

Get him to write gift or something on the box and hope a little!

[SugarJ]

Originally Posted by tragd

Pretty sure you won't need to pay taxes unless he's running a store and that's where you are buying it from.

Wrong, unfortunately. The government wants their piece on everything that comes through the border. You'll get hit with the GST/PST/HST based on the declared value.

[mckchun]

make sure to mark the value down to very low like 200-300, and mark as gift. You'll have avoided a lot of tax

[krajee]

How far in Southern Ontario are you? A lot of people in the Vancouver area ship to just south of the border and drive over to pick it up...it's generally a lot cheaper that way.

[Rasparthe]

My experience is that no matter what you have to ship it United States Postal Service, DO NOT ship it UPS. Fedex isn't so bad but avoid UPS at all costs. Make sure it is clearly marked as USED or even OLD, computer parts in general do not have duty on them but they might assess value on the item for tax purposes and then they slap HST on the value. (It used to be that it was only new stuff they did this to but recently they changed it to ALL items entering Canada) but still I've had $200 chips pass through customs without a dollar of taxes assessed and no brokerage fees. If it was a gift, make sure that is marked as well, although only $20 gifts go through unmolested but sometimes they don't bother the same as with used items. Then just hope you have a custom agent that doesn't know the difference between an i7 and a Celeron D.

[b1lk1]

Use either the UPS service that has the shipper pre-paying taxes/import fees or use FEDEX's same type of service. You should be able to get a computer shipped for $100 this way and there will be no border surprises. If you ship it with a low pricetag and customs opens it you will get hammered no matter who you use. In my eyes, there is little chance that it will make it through with a low value claim, box is too big and heavy. No way customs is gonna miss the chance on that one.

[AmuseMe]

It's also a hit and miss too. Sometimes you don't get charged. I had an order from 'Performance PC's that was over $400 and didn't get charged anything. Another time I got charged for the tax and a small handling fee. I asked the postman and he says they just pick and choose randomly, and sometimes he'll be delivering multiple parcels and have to charge people for one or two and not the others.