eBay International Shipping to Canada and de minimis.

[Anonymous]

In regards to eBay International Shipping from USA to Canada. Is the de minimis $20CAD or $40CAD?

Are packages shipped via USPS or couriers?

[marnotom!]

I recently bought and received an item that was forwarded through eIS that had a value of about C$38 and I wasn't charged taxes on it.  First I thought it was a mistake, but your post reminded me about the C$40 de minimis, so whoever processed the item must have been working off the C$40 limit.

If the event scans are accurate, my particular item was transported as part of a bulk shipment from an eIS hub in Illinois to Mississauga via Sarnia.  It's not all that clear who handled it after that.  The shipping label has a Calgary return address on it, but the shipping suggests that it was received by Canada in Richmond, BC, and it went as a Canada Post Expedited Parcel to where I am on Vancouver Island.

I think this is going to be like the Global Shipping Program, where the logistics company/ies coordinating the shipment will choose what they feel is the best suited carrier for the item and its destination.  I should point out that the eIS Terms and Conditions for Buyers state that the recipient's address should not be a P.O. box, so it's probably a good idea to make your shipping address a hybrid of a box number and street location if you usually get your mail through a P.O. box if you live in a rural/remote location.

[reallynicestamps]

This is a question worthy of its own thread.

Until July 2020,  duty and sales tax was due on any import of $20Cdn or more.

But.

CBSA and Canada Post decided that it was a waste of taxpayer money to assess and charge duty on low value imports. A Canada Post vice-president told the Globe and Mail that 93% of low value parcels were ignored by CBSA.

But couriers, who are not public servants, had to charge duty and taxes and were allowed to charge whatever they wanted as "customs brokerage" fees.  UPS and FedEx started at $25.

There is an archived thread over 5000 posts long complaining about this, pre-GSP.

In 2020, with the new NAFTA (CUSMA),  imports from the USA are duty -free up to $150Cdn. value and tax-free up to $40Cdn.

I suspect that CBSA/Canada Post is still ignoring the low-value overseas imports, and that most imports from the US are under $150, so the chances of anyone actually being charged on the doorstep by their letter carrier are pretty low.

With couriers, they seem to have lowered their brokerage fees-- this may have had something to do with getting contracts with Amazon but that's guesswork on my part, based on nothing but my imagination.