@reallynicestamps wrote:
And both items were less than fifty dollars in value which made the events hilarious.
The duty-free allowance remains at $20Cdn. When the new NAFTA agreement is ratified by Parliament and by Congress, this will rise to $140Cdn (~$105US) BUT taxes will be assessed on items valued over $40Cdn.
CBSA has made a (mildly illegal) policy of ignoring small packages valued under ~$100 because it would actually cost more to assess import fees than could be collected.
Private companies like UPS and PitneyBowes/GSP cannot do that. They have to assess everything.
It does interest me that GSP charges about ~$5US to do this, Canada Post charges $9.95 to collect items shipped through the postal system, but UPS and other couriers feel they need $25 or more for exactly the same service.
Which is another kettle of monkeys.
If you're a US seller using the expensive Global Shipping Program for items less than fifty dollars in value
When the program was initiated for a short time eBay was telling sellers not to use it for items for less than $50. But they never added one of those warning to sellers boxes , the kind they use on sensitive material like stamps, Native American, or Nazi items, to remind sellers that using the GSP on these is not a good idea.
If the new NAFTA does get ratified, a lot of these questions are going to disappear. Of course, there will be lots of questions about sales tax (and the $5 service fee) to keep us amused.
I do not think it is the cost of processing the items and receiving less in duties and taxes. I think it is manpower. Just not enough agents to do the paperwork and a huge amount of parcels incoming. I think the agents are so busy scanning incoming parcels for illegals items or goods that there is not much time to access taxes and duties on the parcels. With the rise of the fentanyl crisis in the past years, manpower was most likely transferred from accessing duties and taxes to scanning parcels.
The world postal system is going to electronic declaration of shipments in the sending country and I can see one day that the senders customs declaration will be read in the receiving country and that used to process duties and taxes automatically with no human intervention (only for problem parcels). The Canadian government will get a huge windfall when this happens as well as other countries with low VAT taxes and duties. Of course, the sender has to declare properly or the buyer will get accessed incorrectly and it will be up to the buyer to fill out forms to get it corrected.
Another alternative is what Australia is doing. The major vendors (eBay, Amazon, etc.) have to collect sales taxes and submit to Australia. Which is an easy solution for world governments. But Australia has a high duty free exemption of $1,000 (no longer VAT) so they do not have to worry about customs processing. A compromise to get sales tax money without the hassle of figuring out duties because of so many classifications.
As for couriers as you said, they have to process all goods properly or get into trouble. Their processing rates are high because it most likely reflects the true costs of processing every shipment and maintaining records for years. Buyers think their rates are outrageous and they are ripping them off for extra money but more than likely it covers the cost of processing a parcel. Remember the Post Office fee of $9.95 is just for collecting the customs duties and taxes due as accessed by the CBSA free of charge. Canada Post does not do the assessment so there is no way you can compare the fees charged by a courier to the processing fee by Canada Post.
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