Comment · Thu, March 12, 2020
Changes to customs declarations affecting order price
Original post in this thread
sxaxrxmxs · 11 points
Sadly I'm not sure I will be able to make any more orders from ND after changes to the declaration forms. Basically now ND declare full price of each product which makes it a certainty of getting a customs charge and a pretty hefty one at that. To give an example my last order was way above the plus 20% of value that its supposed to be as it was declared at $10 an item ($50) and I still had £18 import charge. I'n not sure how its worked out but whom knows how much a charge would be now on a similar order that would now have a declaration of $150 (£54 maybe?). Its not worth it anymore.
What they were answering
Direct reply to the original post — see the thread post above.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb
So our stupid government screwed our trade deals up. We were pulled out of NAFTA, and they proposed USMCA to replace it. However, Canada has not signed it yet. So we are stuck in this limbo area at the moment. This was causing Canadian customs to get more strict and stop packages. So we were forced to change our declarations strategy. Then the threat of a trade war with the EU started causing issues there. So we were forced to start itemizing each item separately and declaring actual value. However, we have been working through what works with the new rules, and we are going to be itemizing each item, but still declaring $10 per item. So for a couple weeks now we have been declaring actual value, since that is what we were instructed to do. However, we are now just doing the separate itemization strategy, but going back to the lower value declaration. We are confident that will work.
Lots of changes are happening with customs around the world. As of April 1st, we have to start collecting VAT for our Norwegian customers. That's the only major change we have been notified of at the moment, but I suspect other EU countries may start doing similar things at some point as well. We are always trying to stay on top of it, but we now not only have to know the tax laws of every state in the US, but we have to actively monitor hundreds of countries around the world constantly changing their rules. It's kind of ridiculous.
Moral of the story, declaration values are not changing. We are just changing the manner in which we itemize and list them on the customs forms. We did change values for a couple weeks, but are changing back now that we have figured out what does and does not work with the new stricter policies of Canada and the EU.