Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge custom's import tax in Australia

Well firstly hello to everybody on hereand thanks for the informative people here it's great to be able to search and find just about any question that needs answering, anyway all that aside i thought i would just let everybody in austyralia know about this customs import tax if you don't already know abourt it. To put it siply if you pay more than AU$1000 for apart that is sent from overseas you may have to pay a import tax on it, for AU$1600 it was $192 after speaking with the lady there, she was mpst helpfull I was surprised by that, a government employee helpfull!!!) sidetracked a bit there but her suggestion was that if i had further parcels with multipul items that they should be split up to eliminate the tax, and preferably sent on different days as they can add delivery's together. this was a simple explination but hey hope it may help someone out there. A so to summerise
1. reduce cost of package to below AU$1000
2. send on different days.

sounds silly but hey thats me.

cheers

Craig

Uhm, Welcome!

Craig

Think yourself lucky - over here in England, if you import goods (from outside the EU) worth more than $50AU, you get hit by tax of 17.5%!! And then the post office add their "handling charge" which can add another $10-20!!

Craig,
I used to import and export goods fom Oz and have dealt with the customs and duty folks extensively and I will share a few valuable secrets.
First of all, keep the total of each package under $1000 in value as you already know. The lower the better, send several boxes if needed. And if at all possible, take it apart whatever it is!!! I sold Fender guitars (took necks off, sent two bodies in one box, and the two necks in another) and sent them over as "guitar parts" where my partner would reassemble them and paid only 3% import tax on parts vs whole units. We would declare the value as about $250 each, what I was actually paying, and he would only have to pay about $10 each for duty. He also goes to England, buys Jaguars, takes the motors and trannies out, ships in seperate containers and also pays tons less taxes and tariffs this way on "Auto parts". The deal is that you pay more import duty on a product made in your homeland, like autos, bikes, etc. If you import something that is not made in your country, the duty is substantially lower. This is all done to protect your own country's local workforce.
There, my useless info for the day.

In my little corner of the US, Ct that is, we have what they call a "use" tax.How They came up with that term I'll never know.

But the way it works is. If i buy somthing by mail from another state lets Virginia of somthing, and they do not charge me the appropiate Ct sales tax. I have to report it on my state income tax return and pay the state 6 1/2 percent of the purchace price. Isnt that special? It's wonderful how or elected reprisetitives are always coming up with new and clever ways to milk us.

Oh that reminds me I better make sure I report that tshirt I bought from cafe press.

I don't know what you're talk'n 'bout

The bloodsuckers here in CT. want to put toll booths on every road leading into and out of the Casinos, they claim we need the money for education.

We spend an average of $53,560 per year per student now in CT. and we rank 37th out of 50 in standardized tests scores.

My son goes to medical school in Boston and that is only $52,000 per year, hell Yale is $47,000 per year.

Just rambling and still p***** off over those A**H***** in Boston and not being able to get to the hospital to see my son.

Wow! I thought living in Taxas was bad.

The Casino and lotto money was supposed to go to education.

Funny how schools are the excuse used each year when my town raises the property tax rates. Figure with all the education related tax hikes and fees and new taxes. They'd be able to send every kid in the state to Yale by now.

Try running a small business in Calif. They say all the fees they charge us is "For the Privilage of doing business in CA". We call it the "Cost of doing business", even told the Gov employee so. She kind of hemmed an hawed, then she agreed with me. Didn't get me out of paying it though.

Bummer,

AmyLee

Thanks Pat for explaining the system, it's much to complex for us simple peasant folk, good to know we have all the smart people to look after us.