Purchased item undervalued at customs

November 9, 2015 9:56 AM

An Etsy seller just messaged me, "I wrote a lower value on the package so you don't need to pay taxes at your country's customs. I hope this is Okay!" I am actually not super okay with this. As the buyer, what are my responsibilities (morally and legally)? Is there an easy way for me to pay the proper customs fees without getting the seller in huge trouble (they do have my home address)? How should I proceed? It was a ~$40 used clothing purchase, so nothing major. I haven't received the package yet.
posted by you're a kitty! to Law & Government (20 answers total)

Just do nothing. This happens thousands and thousands of times everyday and isn't worth worrying about.

If it makes you feel better, report the seller to Etsy and then head to your local customs/post office and enjoy the bureaucracy involved with trying to get someone to charge you the right fees on a $40 purchase.

Also, depending on the country the item was shipped from, there probably won't be any repercussions for the seller unless they get caught doing this multiple times.

I once worked for an online business in the US that marked everything as "gift" and "$50" in value when shipping internationally. Once, in thousands of shipments, a friendly Canadian customs official called up and said they inspected the package and found an invoice for $150 inside the package. Oops!

After that incident, we did change our policy-- we just stopped including the original invoice.

I would chalk this one up to something that you can't reasonably do anything about without investing more time than the whole endeavor is worth.
posted by paulcole at 10:06 AM on November 9, 2015 [19 favorites]

Most governments will allow you to make donations to their revenue collection agency to pay off the debt. You could figure out the amount in question and send it as a donation.

Here's an article about it happening in Canada, which also links to the US site for doing the same.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:07 AM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is there an easy way for me to pay the proper customs fees

It depends on the country you're in but the answer is typically 'not really'.

As the seller they create the documentation, typically a commercial invoice and packing list (even when these are simply electronic check boxes on fedex/dhl) they are the party that signed those documents and validated that cost.

Again depending a lot on country: At 40usd there is not going to be much of or any penalty if customs decides the value is different than stated. In most cases, if caught, you'll be charged the correct amount and the shipper will be fined.

You could notify customs but that is a 100% guarantee that your item will be held at customs, potentially for a while as customs would wait for the seller to send a corrected set of documents as well as a potentially letter explaining the discrepancy on the company's letterhead, and potentially a fine. Which means you may not get these clothes for a while, if the seller is uncooperative.
posted by French Fry at 10:08 AM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Unless you're in a country with what, to me, would be surprisingly strict/high import duties, you're fine. Beyond what paulcole said above, I wouldn't imagine you'd actually trigger any duties - $40 is probably below the lower limit, especially for used clothes.
posted by sagc at 10:09 AM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

The best thing you can do is let the seller know how you feel. Maybe they will be less likely to do this in future.
posted by chevyvan at 10:11 AM on November 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't know what country you're in, but in the US there's no import duty or taxes at all for any single shipment valued under $200. Odds are it'll cost your government more to process your attempt to pay the duty than they would take in from the duty itself.
posted by Itaxpica at 10:13 AM on November 9, 2015 [13 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone. I figured that might be the case, but that I should be responsible and check.
posted by you're a kitty! at 10:25 AM on November 9, 2015

This would be easier to answer knowing your country. Chances are 40$ is below the limit for customs fees, in which case it doesn't matter that the seller had undervalued the item. Morally, the best you can do is let the seller know you're not okay with this. I do think it is unusual and they should have asked first.

Legally, if you have an electronic invoice/receipt, you can forward it to customs by email and explain that you want to pay the proper fee (if $40 of used clothing warrants any taxes and duties, that is). It's very likely though that if you notify the customs, the seller will end up in trouble.
posted by frantumaglia at 10:31 AM on November 9, 2015

Response by poster: Right! Sorry, I'm in the US.
posted by you're a kitty! at 10:31 AM on November 9, 2015

Just for your reference, this is a very common practice when getting items shipped to you from abroad. In the dozen or so purchases I've made in the last few years only a single shipment had an accurate declaration of value.

I did not ask for any of the sellers to inaccurately describe their shipment.
posted by danny the boy at 10:47 AM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Another vote for this is common practice for small businesses / small international purchases. Customs doesn't care. When I have shipped things abroad I always mark it "gift" to be honest, mostly because I didn't want my under-the-threshold package to get held up for any reason and hassle the buyer.
posted by bradbane at 11:36 AM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is pretty much the equivalent of people traveling on business to foreign countries and saying they're there for "meetings" to dodge additional fees/forms at customs. It's an open secret that, while technically not to-the-letter-of-the-law legal, happens all the time and no one really cares. I would not be surprised if it's built into the government's revenue model as shrinkage.
posted by mkultra at 12:33 PM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I tried to call Customs about this very practice and got absolutely nowhere. The human I finally reached had no idea what I should do. I think it must only apply, at a practical level, to containers full of imports or very high value individual shipments. The precedent for this is that the government is not supposed to spend more collecting a fee than the fee is worth. Especially when we're talking duties on the the order of a few percent, the amount is not enough to be worth anyone's while.
posted by wnissen at 1:22 PM on November 9, 2015

I admire your morality, but ask yourself: why on earth would the government care.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:27 PM on November 9, 2015

Unlike most of the EU, you do not owe the US government money when someone ships you a package from abroad. Although I am certain that there limit on this (large, commercial shipments, alcohol, etc), your $40 of vintage clothing is almost certainly not taxed at import time, unlike if you lived in the UK where you would owe tax before you received your package.
posted by Phredward at 3:13 PM on November 9, 2015

BTW, out of my own curiosity, I looked on dutycalculator.com--which gives you 2 free calculations before they start charging you--assuming a bunch of details about what you got, you don't owe ANY duty because your items were worth less than $200.

I guess you can decide if you want to send a nasty note to your seller anyway.
posted by danny the boy at 4:21 PM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Just a few weeks ago I walked, in person, through Customs at a major US airport with enough wine to fill a small swimming pool. We're talking easily an order of magnitude over the duty-free limit, sitting there on a luggage trolley, quite obviously marked. I had all the paperwork and was ready to pay the additional duty.

The Customs guy just looked at the paperwork, rolled his eyes, and welcomed me to the US.

I get the very strong impression they don't give a shit about anything that isn't coming in by the container-load, and maybe not even that if it's not for commercial purposes.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:40 PM on November 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Just ask the next seller to mark the package up by the same amount.
posted by michaelh at 5:51 PM on November 9, 2015

Agreed with kadin - I brought home double the allowed amount of whisky back from the UK to the US and the customs guy just thanked me for being honest before waving me through.
posted by falconred at 10:40 PM on November 9, 2015

BTW I work in import export and have for years, the US really doesn't care about imports. The cut-off for them caring is about money, not size. A $400,000 box is going to get more attention than a $40,000 container. But a $40-200 box is getting literally no attention.

Much of the rest of the world cares a lot. It's about compliance, and they will spend more than they collect to make sure everyone is compliant. I've seen envelopes seized at customs in Israel, boxes of shoes in France, work-gloves in Norway, and a single board game in Belgium.

Much of the industry is built around calculating risk of paying lower duties/VAT (value added tax, around 20% in most of the EU) vs being caught lying about the value of imports into those countries.

Generally speaking customs are among the least accessible and transparent public facing parts of any nation's government. It's why I'm part of multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to dealing with them for money.
posted by French Fry at 6:48 AM on November 10, 2015