Moving back to the USA as Duty Free as possible...
June 6, 2016 3:05 AM Subscribe
I'm returning back to the United States after living overseas. All my stuff is going to get sent by a moving/delivery service soon, and it suddenly dawned on me that I'm going to be way over my $800 duty free limit, and I'm 11 days short of saying a full year to qualify my household goods as duty free. AUGH!
So my questions are:
1) How strictly do they follow the 'one year' policy? Any chance I might still qualify?
2) How do I handle items that I brought with me, and am bringing back to the United States? I'm assuming they're going to count towards my overall value since I can't prove I brought it with me.
3) I know the normal duty free is $800, and there is a flat %3 duty rate up to another $1000. How bad does it get after that? I will be doing a more detailed inventory, but I'm ballparking more like $3000-$3500, thanks to having to replace a computer and some other things.
So my questions are:
1) How strictly do they follow the 'one year' policy? Any chance I might still qualify?
2) How do I handle items that I brought with me, and am bringing back to the United States? I'm assuming they're going to count towards my overall value since I can't prove I brought it with me.
3) I know the normal duty free is $800, and there is a flat %3 duty rate up to another $1000. How bad does it get after that? I will be doing a more detailed inventory, but I'm ballparking more like $3000-$3500, thanks to having to replace a computer and some other things.
Is the one year based off the day it ships, or the day it arrives? How long do you expect it to be in transit? It took two months for our stuff to get from California to Sydney.
posted by jrobin276 at 3:29 AM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by jrobin276 at 3:29 AM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't think you need to worry *too* much about having to prove that some of your stuff is returned American goods; after all, people come back from short vacations with expensive cameras and coats and laptops and shoes all the time and it's pretty rare anyone asks them to prove where they came from. So they probably won't ask for proof, and anyway you probably could prove that at least some of it was bought in the US if you had to - if something was sold exclusively at Bed Bath and Beyond five years ago, most likely you did not buy it abroad 11 months ago.
I believe you can also depreciate the items that you did buy abroad, even though they won't be duty free. So don't be marking down the new price of things you've been using for months; put down what you'd expect to pay at a yard sale or thrift store.
posted by mskyle at 4:05 AM on June 6, 2016
I believe you can also depreciate the items that you did buy abroad, even though they won't be duty free. So don't be marking down the new price of things you've been using for months; put down what you'd expect to pay at a yard sale or thrift store.
posted by mskyle at 4:05 AM on June 6, 2016
>people come back from short vacations with expensive cameras and coats and laptops and shoes all the time and it's pretty rare anyone asks them to prove where they came from.
This has not been my experience. First of all, if you can prove these are "household items" and have been used, it shouldn't be a problem.
My experience: we spend about 3 months a year in Japan. I am from Canada. A few years ago we flew out of Sea-Tac and returned via Sea-Tac. We had a number of cardboard boxes with all of our purchases. Customs in Seattle opened all of them. Since we were transiting they didn't charge us — they were looking for food or plants or something.
When we arrived in Vancouver all of our boxes were opened again. The problem was that I had written the value of everything as $0.00 by mistake. I was severely jetlagged and had a cold, and had taken some cold medication. Canadian Customs didn't charge us (they merely wanted to bully us) because they were household effects, and if you stay for 3 months they won't charge you for it. FWIW we were bringing back new clothes for the kids, shoes, that sort of thing (clothing quality in Canada is really poor compared to Japan, while being more expensive).
I don't know what the rules are for American Customs, but all I'm saying is that you can expect to have any boxes opened by an American Customs official.
posted by My Dad at 5:02 AM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
This has not been my experience. First of all, if you can prove these are "household items" and have been used, it shouldn't be a problem.
My experience: we spend about 3 months a year in Japan. I am from Canada. A few years ago we flew out of Sea-Tac and returned via Sea-Tac. We had a number of cardboard boxes with all of our purchases. Customs in Seattle opened all of them. Since we were transiting they didn't charge us — they were looking for food or plants or something.
When we arrived in Vancouver all of our boxes were opened again. The problem was that I had written the value of everything as $0.00 by mistake. I was severely jetlagged and had a cold, and had taken some cold medication. Canadian Customs didn't charge us (they merely wanted to bully us) because they were household effects, and if you stay for 3 months they won't charge you for it. FWIW we were bringing back new clothes for the kids, shoes, that sort of thing (clothing quality in Canada is really poor compared to Japan, while being more expensive).
I don't know what the rules are for American Customs, but all I'm saying is that you can expect to have any boxes opened by an American Customs official.
posted by My Dad at 5:02 AM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm assuming they're going to count towards my overall value since I can't prove I brought it with me.
You will tell them which items you brought with you and which ones you didn't, and I would just assume they will believe you.
posted by grouse at 5:50 AM on June 6, 2016
You will tell them which items you brought with you and which ones you didn't, and I would just assume they will believe you.
posted by grouse at 5:50 AM on June 6, 2016
You will tell them which items you brought with you and which ones you didn't, and I would just assume they will believe you.
This has been my experience, albeit on a small scale. I sometimes ship my own clothes and stuff like that back to the US mid-vacation (like, I will sometimes have a city part of the vacation and a hiking part of the vacation and I mail my city stuff home so I don't have to carry it on the hiking part). I mark the packages returned American goods and no one opens the packages or asks me to prove that my beat-up vinyl purse and my three-year-old jeans were originally purchased in the US.
Make an honest reckoning of what you bought abroad and its current worth. You don't need to declare the stuff you bought in the US (if you can pack the US-origin and bought-abroad stuff in different boxes, and mark the US-origin stuff as returned goods that's probably worth doing). Customs *can* make things difficult for you and demand hard proof but they generally won't bother. Above the $1000 mark I think everything gets different rates depending on what it is and what it's made of and its country of origin and stuff like that, which is a pain in the ass for the customs official too, so they're motivated to let small things pass.
posted by mskyle at 9:17 AM on June 6, 2016
This has been my experience, albeit on a small scale. I sometimes ship my own clothes and stuff like that back to the US mid-vacation (like, I will sometimes have a city part of the vacation and a hiking part of the vacation and I mail my city stuff home so I don't have to carry it on the hiking part). I mark the packages returned American goods and no one opens the packages or asks me to prove that my beat-up vinyl purse and my three-year-old jeans were originally purchased in the US.
Make an honest reckoning of what you bought abroad and its current worth. You don't need to declare the stuff you bought in the US (if you can pack the US-origin and bought-abroad stuff in different boxes, and mark the US-origin stuff as returned goods that's probably worth doing). Customs *can* make things difficult for you and demand hard proof but they generally won't bother. Above the $1000 mark I think everything gets different rates depending on what it is and what it's made of and its country of origin and stuff like that, which is a pain in the ass for the customs official too, so they're motivated to let small things pass.
posted by mskyle at 9:17 AM on June 6, 2016
I recently made an international move to the US. The whole shipment was insured for maybe ~40k, to give you an idea of value.
I signed a form saying that everything I was shipping I'd owned for more than a year. And that was about it. I was never asked to prove my relatively used-looking boxes of random household items and furniture were owned by me for more than a year, or asked any questions at all beyond the one form. The only thing Customs did was xray the entire container.
That said, you might have a different experience if you're packing things that look primarily 'new', or potentially sellable. They're really much more interested in anyone with commercial purposes behind whatever they're shipping.
posted by Ashlyth at 7:53 PM on June 6, 2016
I signed a form saying that everything I was shipping I'd owned for more than a year. And that was about it. I was never asked to prove my relatively used-looking boxes of random household items and furniture were owned by me for more than a year, or asked any questions at all beyond the one form. The only thing Customs did was xray the entire container.
That said, you might have a different experience if you're packing things that look primarily 'new', or potentially sellable. They're really much more interested in anyone with commercial purposes behind whatever they're shipping.
posted by Ashlyth at 7:53 PM on June 6, 2016
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posted by pharm at 3:14 AM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]