03-26-2004, 05:20 PM
You don't have to pay tax on gifts under $50 if they're mailed to you. In most cases they will ignore packages up to $200 as far as taxes are concerned.
It's actually worse coming into Canada from the US. They have been known to reevaluate the value of a package coming into Canada and charge more.
I had one instance where a friend of mine was cleaning out his PC game collection and mailed me a box of old games he didn't want any more. He declared it as $10 total value which shouldn't have cost me anything. Customs opened the box and decided it was worth $300 for all the games and charged me taxes on that. I appealed and got my taxes back a year and a half later but it still sucked. That's one nice thing I've never heard of any one in the US having to deal with.
If it's just a few DVDs and the declaration is under $50 but still seems reasonable then there wont be any taxes due.
It's actually worse coming into Canada from the US. They have been known to reevaluate the value of a package coming into Canada and charge more.
I had one instance where a friend of mine was cleaning out his PC game collection and mailed me a box of old games he didn't want any more. He declared it as $10 total value which shouldn't have cost me anything. Customs opened the box and decided it was worth $300 for all the games and charged me taxes on that. I appealed and got my taxes back a year and a half later but it still sucked. That's one nice thing I've never heard of any one in the US having to deal with.
If it's just a few DVDs and the declaration is under $50 but still seems reasonable then there wont be any taxes due.
Gullible isn't in the dictionary.