rockandroll...Were all of those items sent Priority?
I've found that first class international will rarely get taxed but whenever I receive a package that was sent USPS Priority, I always have to pay the gst and the $9.95 handling fee. But it is very rare for a package sent with USPS to be assessed duty.
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Of the 86 items I cited, I know for certain the shipping method for 66 of them (I'd have to go over every single purchase in my separate E-Mail folders to get exact info for each and every one). Plus, I'm not including another 32 items I since sold . . . they're in a different spreadsheet, and I didn't keep the exact breakdown of shipping and tax for those . . . only the grand total I paid.
Anyway . . . the breakdown is as such for the 66 items purchased from the U.S. that I'm certain of the shipping method:
35 were sent via First Class Mail International:
Of those, 27 were not charged tax (77%) and 8 were charged tax (23%)
31 were sent Priority Mail International:
Of those, 21 were not charged tax (68%) and 11 were charged tax (32%)
On a side note, although a few First Class items valued at $50 to $100 were indeed charged tax, among the Priority Mail items that were not charged tax were:
$225 Amp Head
$325 Guitar Pedal
$365 Attenuator
$315 Microphone
$425 Mixing Console
$1,200 Electric Guitar
$1,300 Guitar Amp
$1,950 Electric Guitar
Most of the Priority Items that were not charged tax were in the $50 to $200 range. I did get dinged on tax for a higher percentage of expensive items than "sub $200" items, but my best ballpark is that I was charged tax on expensive items perhaps 25% more often than cheaper items.
I guess my best conclusion might be that if I buy a $1,000 item, I do indeed plan on paying tax as part of the budget, but only end up paying about 40% of the time maximum. For items around $200, I only end up paying tax about 15% of the time maximum.
Put another way . . . if I had been paying full tax on all (or most) of my purchases from the U.S. consistently throughout that past 2 & 1/2 years, I would have stopped buying from the U.S. long ago (obviously) and restricted my purchases to Canadian sellers (even if I had to pay tax) to save on shipping costs and currency exchange.
Therefore, being forced to pay tax on items from the U.S. via the GSP means I obviously won't be buying those items unless the selling price is extremely attractive. I'd rather roll the dice with direct USPS shipping because frankly, I like my money in my pocket.
I don't feel guilty about this in the least because of the thousands of dollars of stuff I've sold to U.S. buyers, not one has ever reported paying tax or extra charges.
If the guy in Texas who bought a $4,000 Custom Shop guitar from me about a year or so ago had ended up paying an extra $700 to $800 on top of the sale price + shipping, I can guarantee he'd never buy from Canada again. Same goes for me in reverse (without malice, of course). It's simply a matter of practicality and numbers.
One last thought . . . if the Canadian government wanted to increase eBay sales and revenue within Canada, they could simply clamp down on charging tax, and thus drive Canadian buyers to Canadian sellers. Although, if the U.S. did the same, I suspect there would be reams of Canadian sellers out of business in a heartbeat.
So, before anyone tries to justify the GSP as it applies to Canadian buyers, just think about the prospect losing your business if the U.S. did the same. I suspect the loss of 320 million potential buyers would be the death knell for the bulk of Canadian sellers. To be fair and more-or-less accurate, 320 million is high, but whatever the number of U.S. eBay consumers there are out of 320 million would be the market you'd lose.
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