So I'm thinking of bidding on some used machinery in Canada, and was wondering what I need to declare when I come back across the border? Does anyone know the fees? I'm having little luck with google so far... Mark
It took me 30 seconds to find this link:
Depends where it was made. Canadian or American, no problem. (NAFTA) If it is Euinese, Taiwanese, or Japanese you may need to pay some duty. Otherwise it would just be taxes if applicable. Coming North, we need to pay HST or GST on the full value of the equipment.
Personal use or commercial (resale) are two totally different situations.
Depending on just how much and what, you'll probably want to do some other checking on whether they'll expect more than just the declaration form; they're used to the normal touristy things all the time; and while I'm certain it's not uncommon at all in the larger scheme of things, it won't be so common as the hand-knit woolens or single-malt from Scotland... :)
I think duty-exempt is $800 or so altho it's been a number of years since came back so don't know if it's been modified or not. I do _NOT_ know what duty rate(s) are at all, though...
Anyway, as somebody else says, contact Customs first and discuss what you're thinking of.
--dpb
Have a look at this to see if it can assist you in the decision process.
Have a look at this to see if it can assist you in the decision process.
Call customs. Asking here is just pissing into the wind.
Not really. Just print out the replies you get and show them to the guy at the border. He'll accept that as proof you can bring them in, especially if it is someone like Leon that has a good reputation.
LOL. Not sure if I have mentioned this before but my wife, son, and I visited her two aunts in 1998. One lived in Buffalo, the other in Burlington. We visited the Buffalo aunt fist and then all of us went to Burlington to see the other aunt. My wife and the Buffalo aunt went in her car, my son and I followed in our pick-up truck with Texas Plates. I thought I would never convince the border guard, going in to Canada, that my truck was not loaded down with guns and that I was not there to shoot the place up. After declaring no guns several times, he told me to get in the line a quarter mile up where all the vehicles were being searched and dismantled. I did not. There was no police chase. ;~)
You're like my Grandma, always ruining Grandpa's stories. ;)
You drove through Canada to get from Buffalo to Burlington? Was that a scenic route or something?
My wife and the Buffalo aunt went in
I can't remember offhand how many times I've been through USA/Canada Customs. I'm guessing 20 trips; by car, train, plane and boat. While we've never had any real trouble, we have noticed a generally more aggressive stance from US Customs (we are US citizens) than Canadian Customs.
My first time was by train, back in maybe 1976. It was Wintertime. The train stopped at the border and a Canadian Customs agent boarded our car. He spoke excellent French-accented
On 09/09/2014 12:11 PM, Greg Guarino wrote: ...
As purely visitor, generally true in my experience as well. OTOH, traveling _to_ Canada in a support role with tool kit for online coal analyzers at various locations in Saskatchewan, Canadian customs was extremely touchy and hard-to-please on the work-by-non-Canadian issue. Learned eventually to just say "no" irregardless of the reality of who was going to actually touch the machine and assure them it was only "advisory" role from the manufacturer while onsite personnel would perform the dirty-hands stuff...which, of course, was a complete fabrication but it was expedient to avoid the extra hassles required otherwise. Regardless that we were there twice a year on contract w/ Sask Power, it never got any easier over 10 years...
You drove through Canada to get from Buffalo to Burlington? Was that a scenic route or something?
My wife and the Buffalo aunt went in
I can't remember offhand how many times I've been through USA/Canada Customs. I'm guessing 20 trips; by car, train, plane and even boat. While we've never had any real trouble, we have noticed a generally more aggressive stance from US Customs (we are US citizens) than Canadian Customs.
My first time was by train, back in maybe 1976. It was Wintertime. The train stopped at the border and a Canadian Customs agent boarded our car. He wore a knee-length businessman's wool coat and spoke excellent French-accented English. He checked our IDs (Driver's Licenses, acceptable in that era) asked where we were going (Montreal) and the purpose of our trip (pleasure). He told us where some of his favorite restaurants were, hoped we'd have a good trip, and moved on to the next row.
The return trip was a different story. Two uniformed, armed U.S. Customs agents boarded our car. One asked us a number of questions, rapid-fire, comparing our answers with our IDs. The second repeated all the same questions a couple of minutes after. They opened luggage, checked one woman's hat to see what kind of fur it was and generally made an intimidating show of it. They spent an especially long time with one American man who looked to be of Vietnam-era age. (I'm a little younger).
On one trip a few years ago we had our daughter and her friend in the car with us. Both girls were about 17 years old. We had all manner of paperwork, just in case, in case we were questioned about bringing a minor (not in our family) into Canada. The trip up went smoothly. The US agent on the way back was quite aggressive though, barking hhis way through the usual questions. "Isn't today a SCHOOL day??" he asked, after staring the girls down through the rear window. Yes, it was a school day. We had taken two A-students out for a long weekend.
We've met some more laid-back US agents too, usually at sleepier crossings like Jackman Maine and Derby Line Vermont, but they tend to have a certain edge to them. These days I guess that's unsurprising.
I assumed he meant Burlington Ontario. ;-)
I've never had issues on the US side. I have run into some really surly guards on the Quebec side. We had our stuff ripped out of the trunk once and had to repack suitcases on the roadside.
I've heard of it being in the back seat of a car but I guess a train works. I guess a little French helped set the mood. ;-)
I don't carry tools and I take my wife so they think we are tourists the few time I've gone for work.
One of our suppliers h ad a plant in the US and similar plant in CA. The tech people have the same problem. They are always just carrying samples or going to a meeting. Never to "work".
_Eventually_ (but it took me about 8 years before got the funding approved by which time I wasn't in the gig for much longer) I managed to get a full toolkit and a place to store it at one of the plants that was on the way to the rest. That meant only did have to have the spare parts in hand and if knew of any hardware problems ahead of time could just ship them ahead...often, however, the builtin diagnostics weren't sufficient to uncover the more subtle issues that tended to arise and so almost always took a spare data acq board "just in case". (This was in fairly early days of the PC-for-industrial use and used a pretty delicate board for the gamma-spec data acq that was prone to channel dropouts that were erratic and hence hard to detect w/o specific testing. Generally they weren't hard faults and so didn't upset the machine excepting for an occasional measurement. Since they cycled on
3-sec interval, one anomalous ash measurement would hardly show up; excepting that when it started, the symptom would gradually continue to get worse. The vendor swapped the cards out so it was simpler to just replace them and get them reworked rather than try to write more robust code to try to catch the oddball counts when they occurred...
------------------------------------------------------- "Greg Guar> You drove through Canada to get from Buffalo to Burlington? Was that
----------------------------------------------------------- Le> My wife and the Buffalo aunt went in
------------------------------------------------------------- "Greg Guar> I can't remember offhand how many times I've been through USA/Canada
------------------------------------------------------------- My how times have changed.
During the '80's, actively sailed the Great Lakes, mostly Lake Erie.
It was not uncommon to sail over to Canada and back to US on a summer week end.
When you got to Canada, there was a phone booth at the dock with the toll free number to Canadian customs.
You called in and answered a check list of maybe 10 questions which included where you were coming in from, how long you were going to stay, did you have any firearms on board, and how much booze you had on board.
If it took 10 minutes total, it took 10 hours.
On the return trip, just sailed back to my dock. Never let the US side know I'd ever left US waters.
There was a Canadian who loved to race, belonged to at least
3 US yacht clubs just so he could race. He sailed across and back every couple of weeks all summer long.Don't know how he handled dealing US customs, but it didn't interfere with his racing.
Those were fun years.
Can't imagine how things are done today, but it can't be much fun.
Lew
Burlington, Ontario, Canada is only 60 miles drive from Buffalo. ;~)
"Lew Hodgett" wrote
Dang, I was active on Lake Erie sailing from mid 70's to the mid to late
80's. I wonder if we ever did the "where there are two sailboats, there will be a race" thing, together?I sailed out of Port Clinton, ranged from Toledo to Kelly's Island to the Put-in-Bay area. Oday 25, reworked with a Yanmar diesel inboard, ourselves.
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