If you live in europe & import prepare to rejoyce

I've always been curious about how customs works. I've filled out plenty of customs forms and got a few scraps of information here and there, but never the full picture. In the US, we usually don't have any major taxes on stuff coming from overseas unless there is postage due (Although that is rare).

So, how does it work? Do they evaluate the item and see how much it is worth, or is there a rough value for certain categories?

 

Well, here in Uruguay it depends a lot on.. LUCK!.. yeah haha, it mostly depends on the person that sorts the packages that day

But basically they've got these rules: anything under 50 bucks (price of the item & shipping combined) passes through, then anything that exceeds that limit has to pay a 60% tax over the total price (of item + shipping). There are some exceptions for books and dvds.

If something gets stuck, you receive a letter and have to go to the customs office and if you are elusive with words you can make your way out without having to pay the tax. I recall once, a couple of years ago, I bought a bluetooth headset for my PC/phone and it got stuck and the old lady at the customs kept on telling me it wasn't a headset but an mp3 player so it had to pay tax lol, after a very long conversation I could convince her that it was in fact a bluetooth headset and I came out without paying taxes.

And marking it as "Gift" doesn't work here, it falls under the same set of rules, I once bought a VGA box and had it sent marked as a gift and it was stuck and when I told the old lady (the same one as the bluetooth headset, lol) it was a gift from a friend in the US she told me "well, you'd better tell your friend to send you some money to get your gift out"... man was I mad... I couldn't get through that one and had to pay 60 bucks in taxes!

 

Yeah, I honestly don't understand it overseas. I never had to pay customs when receiving stuff over here, but then again, I've only ever purchased less than $100 at most internationally.

I think it's really a silly form of protectionism for some countries and a way to whittle away as much money as possible from someone. 60% tax on an item, for example? Horrible... The Brazilian system exemplifies this to the extreme.

 

Yup, a 60% tax is bat shit insane... they once said it was to "protect" national production from imported goods, but what the hell, as far technology goes, we produce almost nothing so I don't really see the point in charging such high taxes.

 

Actually it's only Parcel Force that hold your parcel back. Fed Ex and UPS give you the parcel and send you an invoice at a later date.

 

Yeah, it really doesn't make sense when Uruguay and Brazil don't produce much in the way of videogames natively.. so that leaves those in charge of this rule as just trying to make money off luxuries moreso than necessary. Brazil is terrible with this and it's not like the people there like it or accept it (willingly). New consoles range in price from 1K-2KUSD and games in the hundreds of dollars. The article below is dated.. from October 2007.. but even still, insane.

http://www.gamegrep.com/blog/5751-wii_costs_1100_playstation_3_costs_181882_in_brazil/

You can import games too, but be prepared to pay heft customs, taxes, etc on them. :dance:.................... :banghead:

 

In Argentina a XBOX 360 Arcade costs (in the black market, imported from the US) U$S 475, while in the US it costs U$S 199, it makes mad that they have to charge so much for a fucking videogame console that isn't even sold legally here! I mean, what kind of industry are they protecting by charging so much for an XBOX?

Also, Microsoft doesn't give a shit about South America. Nintendo is another clear example of not giving support in South America, I had to use a Mexican Postal Code to buy MegaMan 9 from the Wii Store using a Credit Card. The ONLY console manufacturer that cares about South America is SONY, they're the only ones that give support here to their PS3.

 

Don't know about Argentina, but in Brazil is just the opposite of what you said.

In Brazil, MS sells the 360 officialy. It's expensive, yes, but at least there's customer support and 3 year warranty. Stores are filled with Xbox360 stuff.

Not to mention that if someone wants, they can find imported US consoles cheaper than the official release, by buying from Paraguay (most independent sellers and stores get their consoles from that anyway). No warranty on those though.

Nintendo has terrible support in whole south america, thanks to Latamel. A Nintendo DSi costs here more than a PS3 in USA!

Sony don't even care about Brazil. Most companies already said that the Brazilian market is the most important and with big growth expectations, but Sony put Brazil on their "phase 3" for Latin America support... Plus they could benefit from the Blu-ray player. Blu-ray has been avaiable here for more than a year, "specialists" say that 2009 will be the Blu-ray year down here but i honestly doubt it. HDTV's are getting cheaper but most people use DVD players with composite cables. And HDTV Channels are still scarse.

That's why i'll probably ask a friend to buy one in USA and bring it to me.

As for 60% custom taxes for anything higher than 50 dollars, it's a bitch yes. Although i know people that had parcels with value more than 800 dollars that customs didn't even bothered looking, while some people with less than 50 dollars had to pay taxes.

Protect national production? Well, in Brazil you have some odd companies producing Famiclones (Dynacom being the most "famous), Tectoy with older Sega Systems and now the hugely overpriced Zeebo (that's not even a brazilian product, as it was developed by Qualcomm USA).

In the end the government is just dumb. They have these high taxes for like 5% of the stuff sold here, while the rest 95% avaiable is imported from Paraguay, USA and Mexico under traffic, not paying a single Real of taxes.

Why not lower these taxes to 10% and pratically "kill" the traffic from Paraguay, and have some big income because of these lowered taxes? Not to mention the job offerings because of that healthy and official market?

Don't get the Brazilian government? Me neither...

 

Sorry for going off-topic. I totally agree with you about HDTV and Blu-Ray, most people here are used to buy pirated movies for 5 Argetinian pesos that look like shit (VERY poor encoding and compression) and use them in their DVDs hooked via composite to a CRT TV, so unless people start pirating BluRay movies as much as DVDs and HDTVs become more popular, I think that the BluRay isn't going to get popular here for a few more years. I know it's sad to hear that technology is moved by piracy here, but you can't expect somebody to spend 50 argentinian pesos in a movie or 300 pesos in a videogame when they only make 1200 argentinian pesos per month.

 

just for the record, here we usually pay around 105% taxes, I sh*t you not...

 

Holy crap. :noooo: