Customs and Duties - International Watch Purchases

You happen to be a 15 Pen collector club member as well... IFYKYK 😉...👀🤏🏻😜🫣

I shit you not, someone at my work is named "Mike Hunt". Granted, Michael is his middle name, but I found it infinitely hilarious at how reluctant he was to tell me what it was.

Back to the main topic, I'm very green to this. How the hell would they know? All I'm saying is I ain't declaring a goddamn thing.

My sister’s brother-in-law’s dad is named Mike Hunt. Met him once and I almost soiled myself

Never want to offer advice of this sort but my retired accountant purchased a 10k equivalent to cad a few years ago, watch was a Franck Muller watch. He tossed box and papers, one week after returning to Canada watch dies during our lunch, had to pay a few hundred to repair the off the shelf ETA movement. He could have mailed the papers home but you know the thing about accountants, don’t like to get caught when they bend the rules.

It’s tax season in the US, time to be extra nice to our accountants. They bend the rules so we don’t have to 🤣

Consider a name change for your trip....maybe "Fridto Movlong".

Ask Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Or any of these…

Too soon 😆

Get to the Choppah!

"Hi Mr. Mehoff! Will you be coming today?"

Who said I didn’t already🤣

I need to learn about this process. I'm sure there's an investigative element to it, it's just something I've never needed to think about.

Kevin’s reaction as security tries on the watch:

You know who to call

Now that is great advice. Convince the wife to go on a trip to buy and watch 😂

I don't mess with customs. I don't want to sit in a time out box for any reason. My wife bought a couple LV bags and jewelry last trip. We declared a large amount for us at customs. We paid around $300 but it should've been a lot more. It sucks but it was still a lot cheaper that buying it here.

Yeah getting stuck in customs is NOT the way to close out a trip. I plan on declaring.

Mmmmm. I play very straight and conservative on these things. I personally would not be comfortable taking that risk.

Good advice. It’s not worth it. Just declare.

In May I bought a Longines at the boutique in London. Watch was on my wrist and box was in my backpack when I went through customs coming back. No one asked me a single question.

It is a double edge sword. I don't know how it works in the US, but this is how it works in Canada.

If you had paid import duty and taxes on your watches, you can freely wear them in and out of the country and the custom officers won't give you trouble as long as you have a proof of purchase when you return to Canada. I imagine the same practice applies in the US.

9 out of 10 times no custom officer will bother you when you re-enter the country. But if it happens that one time, I do not know what the penalty would have been if you get caught with an undeclared item. But I imagine it will not be pretty.

Import duty is about 3% (if I remember correctly) for watches and 13% for sales tax. So, the desire to declare or not will vary based on the value of the item.

Similar. Declaring makes sense for coverage.

Went to school with someone name Mike Hunt. Not surprisingly he preferred Michael.

Was he teased endlessly 🤣

I wear the new watch on the plane and through customs, keep my old watch in my bag, so if I get checked I’ll just show them some photos of the old watch , remember to not bring the box back though of the new watch 💔if they check your luggage and find the box with the papers there’s no getting out of that one.

If the box is important just send it to your home address by post

Oh if I get the new watch I’m definitely wearing it all the time. I’m just going to declare it.

So, the seller in Japan inserts your new watch purchase into the local customs system. Does the Japanese customs share this data with other countries' customs? If yes, it would be difficult to pretend that a new watch on your wrist was bought before the trip.

I have the same moral/financial dilemma as planning a trip to Japan, and of course a new watch. Import taxes are crazy in the EU, thus, if to pay those, it does not make sense to buy a watch in Japan, unless it is something unique what you cannot find easily.

I work with customs authorities as a profession. They don't share data on local purchase information - the expenditure to create such a global system would be huge, and it would not bring much benefit to the export country - they would spend time and money to build it, but the revenues would be collected in the destination.. Why would JP want to help the US collect taxes on JP sales..?

There are some attempts now to encourage foreign e-commerce platforms to register with customs authorities in destinations. Eg, EU's IOSS scheme allows eg. Amazon/Ebay in the US to collect EU tax at the point of purchase from the consumer, and then pay it to European Customs in a monthly tax return. The benefit for the e-comm platform being that the consumer feels less red-tape = no surprise customs bills upon receiving their goods, and the consumer feels the confidence to repeat the business as a result. But this scheme is currently voluntary. The UK have a similar approach, where foreign sales below £135 being shipped to the UK must have UK tax collected and remitted by the ecomm platform. It'll become more common in the next decade, i'm sure.

But for in person purchases in shops and hand carrying goods back home: The export country will look after its own affairs - ensuring that if you claim a tax free purchase as the goods will leave the territory, they want to make sure those goods actually do leave the territory and are not resold domestically.

The import country will act independently - relying on its own risk assessment safety nets and random searches. E.g. Interrogating flight manifests, focus on 1st class travelers, regular or short trips, and perhaps some visual assessments at the passport counter (e.g. folks dripping in gold and LV luggage with a British address arriving from Dubai where the only thing to do is go to the mall...). Part of the questioning at the passport counter is to ascertain any potential red flags eg, major purchases, cash carrying etc.

Most authorities are generally understaffed for a watertight border, so they have to prioritise - national security, organised crime, drugs, counterfeits, prohibited flore/fauna/foodstuff, and (probably) way down the list, undeclared personal purchases..

So, long story, even longer... it's unlikely that they will catch you if you purchased a watch abroad whilst on holiday, and hand carried it back, low-key, undeclared. BUT if they do catch you, and you appear to have known about the requirements, and therefore they suspect you deliberately tried to circumvent the tax payment process (by ditching the box, not having the receipt, trying to argue it's not a new watch, etc) they're going to make you pay for it. You'd be better, if they do snag you to have the receipt, answer honestly and pay up.

As a customs expert, I would recommend that you factor in the import tax/duty when you make your foreign purchases and declare them upon return to your home country... and yes, I'm a hoot at parties..🙄

Relentlessly. Poor guy. I don't know what his parents were thinking.