Marking items as a "Gift"

[lbrahea]

Hello,
I have been reading the posts on this board for a while and found a ton of great information and advice, I'm hoping someone might have some insight on this topic.

Something I have been asked about several times is whether I would mark packages as a "Gift" when shipping internationally.

I know that this is so the customer can avoid having to pay taxes and duty for their items, but does anyone know of any negative repercussions for me to do this?

Thanks in advance for any information,
Lisa

[shoplineca]

lbrahea
Loose your business license, face charges, not be permitted to export ...

You may think that today you are just a little fish in the sea or a small business but the day that you get caught is the day you sign your fate to how small your business will remain.

Just explain to your customers that you could be charged for falsifying export documents and losse your licesne to export.

Bottom line "Its just not worth it for one or two sales!"

Malcolm

[mirakbiz_inc]

Hi Malcom

Although I agree with you about not declaring a different value of what was purchased (or mark items as gift) I wanted to ask: since when do you require a license to export??

[shooger]

My post office encourages me to mark items as a gift, and sometimes if I haven't added the little green sticker myself, they'll do it, and mark it as a gift. In general, I don't really care. Most of my stuff is worth less than $20, so buyers aren't going to get charged any kind of duty or anything anyway. That's all the declaration does, by the way. It just lets the receiving postal company know how much to charge the receiver for taxes, if applicable. I don't usually mark the "gift" box, but like I said, sometimes my post office does. No big deal at all.

[shoplineca]

When you applied for your GST you received your BIN (Business ID number), a GST/HST and an Import/Export number.

All of these numbers are tied into your BIN. The GST/HST and the Import/Export numbers simply have an additional series of letters and numbers added to your BIN however it is the BIN that identifies who you are, not the additional letters/numbers. They simply indicate that the number is either GST/HST or Import/Export related.

Canada has negotiated tax treaties with certain countries including the US and falsifying documents to avoid taxes (either for yourself or your customer) is an offense punishable by fines or jail.

As a corporate entity, a partnership or a sole proprietorship you could loose your BIN and have your corporate status removed.

You dont need a BIN to ship via CP to post items as you could do it as an individual however you need a BIN to legally run your business.

Anyway, I dont understand why anyone would take the risk for a total stranger to make a sale or two.

I know for certain that Canadians are more ready to take this risk than Americans for a couple of reasons. The first is that we, as a Nation have historically driven across the US border on shoppling sprees and returned with items without declaring them as our government has set a very low personal excemption limit.

The second is that the US Government has been more vigilant at going after small US businesses that falsify their export forms than the Cdn government has.

I am however personally aware of the Cdn government going after major Cdn businesses and performing complete audits when there was the manufacturer's tax in place and duty drawbacks (tax deductions for exports).

I suppose one could take comfort that no one has had the force of the law come down on them yet but with heightened security at the borders and increased technology, I am certain that it will only be a matter of time that someone sending 40 gufts per month across the border will soon have all their items held up at customs and an RCMP visiting them by way of a formal request by the IRS (similar to the satelite TV/grey cards TV signal theft).

Malcolm

[lbrahea]

Thank you very much for your responses. I appreciate all of the information you've provided.

[gezeilstra]

There was an article about items crossing the border recently in the Globe & Mail, they stated that things are getting much stricter. It mentioned that marking items as gifts is no longer acceptable, as well as not putting down a proper return address. They (presumably the US border) also will not accept packages without proper names, so if you put grandma or santa, they'll send them back.

My post office also showed me a document that went out saying that reusing boxes with markings for restricted items is no longer acceptable, even with a customs form saying what is really inside, guess they're also anti-recycling!

[lbrahea]

Thanks for the information gezeilstra. I had heard a bit about the proper names, and it was mentioned that "Mr or Mrs" would also be unacceptable. Did the article mention that as well?

I will be careful of the boxes I ship my items in too!
Thanks

[javax.swing]

While the threshold for Canadian imports is $20CAD, for the USA it is $200USD...anything that I sell over that value I won't ship without full insurance anyways, so this gift thing is really redundant.