TubeNet

I recently had some great luck on Craigslist and found a cool old horn. It was much too big to ship via FedEx Ground or USPS, so we opted for Greyhound. Greyhound doesn't ship to Canada, so I drove down across the border to pick the package up. I must admit I had some fleeting thoughts of obtaining a receipt undervaluing the horn, but then I spoke to two TubeNetters who had strange experiences with horns they sold - in one case the border security went to his house and wanted to know if he had sold a tuba, and in the second case the shipping company came to his shop to make sure he was in the tuba repair business. Has anyone here been caught at the border falsifying the value of their tuba purchase? Any close calls that made you seem extremely uncomfortable and wishing you hadn't taken the chance?
I wound up declaring the full value of my purchase and paid the GST and PST in full. Ouch. I still can't sit down.
I may fill out a refund request and try to reclaim the taxes; after all, the horn's taxes have probably been paid numerous times since 1923, and besides, it was a Craigslist purchase and not a store purchase - since when do Craigslisters charge tax?

What did you pay for the horn and what value were your taxes based on? What kind and condition was the horn? Sounds like they valued the horn based on the price you paid to the seller.

I had to pay US excise taxes shipping an almost new, Swiss-made horn into the US. Fed Ex did the customs work for me.

That Swiss tuba was brought to the US by its first owner, who later sold it to a foreign student, who took the horn back to his home when his studies were complete. I assume that the original buyer paid excise taxes when he brought the horn into the US. After my payment, the US received excise taxes twice on the same instrument.

tubahed wrote:I may fill out a refund request and try to reclaim the taxes; after all, the horn's taxes have probably been paid numerous times since 1923, and besides, it was a Craigslist purchase and not a store purchase - since when do Craigslisters charge tax?

It's been [quite a] few years since I lived in Toronto, so things might have changed since then, but during my time North of the Border, if you were importing a non-zero-rated item, it didn't matter whether you bought an item from a retailer or a private individual: you were still liable for GST and HST on the dollar value of the item (including duty and excise taxes) minus your personal exemption ($50 if out of the country < 48 hours; $400 if o.o.c 48 hrs to 7 days; $750 if o.o.c. ≥ 7 days; exemptions not stackable, e.g., exemption is $400 if o.o.c. 3 days, not $450).

Beware of trying to bring Chinese products into Mexico. The customs officers have discretionary powers of charging from 35 percent up to 550 percent of the estimated price. My wife ordered a Chinese blouse from Victoria`s Secret and the customs wanted over a hundred dollars to allow a 20 dollar blouse in. Imagine what your Dalyan could cost. Entering the States with European stuff is tricky. I often just declared things to have no tax posted on them. John