Import Duty in the US?

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byoung

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 16, 2006
Messages
125
Location
San Gabriel Valley, CA
I want to buy some ez1073-500's from Colin at AML  in the U.K. and have them shipped here to the U.S. but I'm curious if anybody has had to pay import duty or customs fees when doing so? If so how and what do they charge you? I know I have bought lots of gear and parts from overseas but never paid import duty before, but I read about somebody else having to recently. So it got me curious that maybe things have changed since my last U.K. purchase.
 
I had a mic repaired by a German mic tech. When I got it back they had charged me import duty. I got it waived but only because it was my American built (DIY) mic to begin with.


I have paid import duty on microphone bodies too.

Not sure if it's always charged.
 
Ive found when shipping with non gov't entities (UPS, FEDEX and the dreaded TNT) You're more likely to get hit with a charge.  I've brought a ton of stuff over from EU. Only time i got hit with it was when one of the aforementioned services were used.  Regular Royal Mail / US post, never got anything.  On the other side, TNT actually INVENTED import taxes and bundled them in with legit duties just to paid their bottom line.  (theres a reason they have an F on the BBB).
 
Limit was recently raised to $800. Anything below that amount can be imported duty free.
 
Banzai said:
Limit was recently raised to $800. Anything below that amount can be imported duty free.

I saw that just recently. The limit on UK imports is £135 ($167) and we pay 20% VAT on anything worth more than £15. Of course, being the UK, we pay VAT on the goods, and on the shipping cost and on the duty as well. It's an old British tradition to pay taxes on taxes...

Nick Froome
 
  50% on anything over $25 here... and those $25 are once a year, then just 50%. Goods+shipping+any other cost. On top of that an extra ~$5 for handling or whatever, independently of the value.

  I guess isn't hard to agree that's just too much, the repercussions of being too much are another discussion though.

JS
 
For the first 150 years or so the US had no taxes that I'm aware of. Country ran just fine.  :eek:

It can be done when govt is small, but like any baby monster it wants to eat, and when it eats it grows and needs to eat some more...until eventually it grows so large it consumes itself and the populace along with it.
 
> For the first 150 years or so the US had no taxes that I'm aware of.

Import/export drug taxes. Tobacco, sugar, whiskey duty.
 
PRR said:
> For the first 150 years or so the US had no taxes that I'm aware of.

Import/export drug taxes. Tobacco, sugar, whiskey duty.
It can hardly qualify as "no taxes". It's a different taxation system, medieval in fact, consumer tax. When there is virtually non-existent centralized administration, taxes are basically constituted of consumer tax and excise.
This was heavily criticized (and abolished by the French revolution) because it taxes the poor more than the rich (in proportion).
I don't think returning to such a system could be considered progress.
 
> it taxes the poor more than the rich (in proportion).

The early US Fed drug taxes hit the rich in other countries, so were well tolerated at home.

Oh, there were always some smugglers evading the export tax collectors so they could turn more profit on the dock in Europe.

Heavy internal tax came with whiskey tax, and the so-called Whiskey Rebellion, when mountain-dwellers with little contact with the Fed felt their natural right to brew their own whiskey was infringed.
 
There wasn't much of anything you'd call 'public infrastructure' to support back then either.
 
> wasn't much of anything you'd call 'public infrastructure'

Whiskey Tax was to pay-down old debts from the 1776 Revolution.
 
abbey road d enfer said:
How did the country finance its institutions then (army, justice, police, administration)?
In the early years of our republic the government was fully supported by permit fees and the like.  The tariff act of 1789 was established as a relatively easy to enforce method to fund the government from imports and approached 90+% of all government revenue (something like 20% average duty) for over a century. The coast guard was started up to stop rum runners and other smugglers trying to escape paying tariffs.

The federal income tax didn't start until 1913, I don't recall a celebration when that income tax passed it's 1st centennial anniversary.  ::)

Historically the US government had borrowed money to fund past wars and such costs were not considered routine and recurring budget items. It seems the cost of the possibly multiple decades long war we are now engaged in, cannot be casually treated as an incidental item, but is a repeating cost that should be budgeted (IMO). 

Of course opinions vary and politics is the business of kicking the can down the road for others to deal with later.  IMO later is now for this and other unfinished (spending) business.

JR 
 
abbey road d enfer said:
No police, no judges, no harbours...?
The post office promoted development of (post) roads and I recall some roads in New England that are still called "old post road" and the like.

Postage probably funded most of that infrastructure crude as it was, while the government appreciated the value of timely mail delivery for economic growth so gave them a monopoly to help their business persist and connect the nation together.  Ben Franklin was the first postmaster.

JR
 
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