Question about declared value on international shipments with free shipping

[kittenvintage]

Hi, Small question about declared value on international shipments to the US being sold with ' free shipping ' .

I have free shipping on almost all of my items and i add the shipping cost onto the item the sale price.

I was wondering, if i sell something for example CAD$149.00 (which has the 18$ shipping cost in the price) Do i put the declared value at CAD$149.00 or CAD$131.00 (the cost of the item minus the actual shipping cost worked into the sale price). 

Thank you 🙂

[ricarmic]

I have two scenarios:

My USA stuff is almost always free shipping like you.
My International stuff is almost always charged an extra shipping cost.

Normally I include a receipt.

The receipt shows the cost of the item, so for USA folks it shows the amount with shipping built in, for international folks it shows the cost of the item by itself and the shipping added on a separate line. (same as one would see in ebay/paypal)

If you are selling to the USA it really doesn't matter either way as they're good for $800 worth of stuff without problems...although you are selling clothes so that might make a difference.

Anyway, my opinion is put the amount on the customs form that it shows them paying in eBay for the item (so in your case shipping is 0 so you would show the total cost - ie $149.)

[pjcdn2005 · Accepted solution]

As ricarmic mentioned, US buyers do not have to pay any import duties unless an item is $800+ so it doesn't really matter how you do it. I would probably put the actually selling price on the customs form and then a packing slip in with the package showing the price with free shipping.

Its unlikely that you would ship to other countries for free but if you did, it would be a good idea to split out the costs since the customs office may tax the amount declared plus the amount of postage stated on the package. If the shipping cost was included in the item price, they could end up paying tax twice on the same amount.

[recped]

As far as I know according to the WTO and GATT shipping if not shown as a separate line item must be included in the declared value.

Many countries (the EU for example) charge import taxes on both the item value and the shipping charges, duty on the other hand only applies to the item value. For the bulk of consumer mail order sales duty isn't even part of the equation, all that is charged are Sales or Value Added taxes.