How Can I Determine Import And Customs Fees For My Wedding Dress?
I found the perfect wedding dress online, but it is from Shanghai. The site has free shipping, but states that I may need to pay import fees and taxes. I enlisted the help of a co-worker and found the HS code should be 6204.49.10.00. Is there anyway to determine how much I would have to pay in fees and taxes? It will be from Shanghai to the US. Please help! The wedding is so soon and I need to order my dress ASAP! Thank you so much!
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If they ship it by mail, the post office will collect the fee from you directly when you pick up the package.http://www.traveloasis.com/uscustravin.h…
The fee calculation is somewhat (unclearly) explained athttp://www.customs.gov/
I would just go ahead and order it, pay at delivery whatever fee the Customs office decides upon. If I thought it was too much I’d then send a letter to the Customs office that issued the mail entry fee, making my case for a lower fee. There is a good chance that they are overloaded and would rather lower the fee than go to court about it.
You’ll have to contact US Customs to find out what the duty might be. Duties are based upon the item imported, the exact materials that are used in it (clothing, especially ornate items like wedding dresses, can be a nightmare) and the country of origin of the materials and the end item. Note that the country of origin may NOT be the same as the country that the item ships from! Duties on clothing can range from nil to several hundred percent.
The other “gotcha” with imports is that some materials that might be legal in other countries (or if illegal, the laws are unenforced) are illegal in the US. You can still find genuine whalebone corsetry in some Asian countries. If your dress included that it would be confiscated by US Customs and destroyed if they discovered it. Your only recourse would be through the seller. Good luck recovering from a Shanghai seller!
One more “gotcha” to consider is that free shipping from Shanghai is almost certainly via surface shipping. Delivery times for ocean freight can run 6 weeks or more — sometimes a LOT more. If you need it quickly, pay the extra for air shipment!
The final “gotcha” particularly with goods from China is counterfeit trademarked goods. If the dress purports to be from a major name designer and the price is “too good to be true” then it’s a virtual certainty that it’s counterfeit. Counterfeit goods are also subject to confiscation and destruction by US Customs. You’ve probably seen the newsreels of Customs authorities flattening truckloads of counterfeit Rolex watches with a road roller. You don’t want your wedding dress buried in that pile!