I am planning on purchasing a telescope from hongkong which costs $1700, and in australia it costs $2300. in usa it costs way more after shipping costs $500 to be exact. The item weights 16kg,I know that when items are declared as gifts customs will still most likely check it, but I want to avoid the 10% tax. I'm planning to dispose of the box packing and seperate the items and have it stated lower than $1000. Would it be better to seperate the items since there are only 2 major parts, the tripod and the long tube, cheers.
Shipping large items from Hong Kong to Australia
DEvok on 14/03/2014 - 23:26
Comments
10% tax, that is $170. So you want to save the $170 tax, and in return pay twice the shipping fees. The second shipping for the tripod (maybe 4kg i don't know) will most likely cost more than $170.
I'd suggest you do the calculation first.
if not, if the shipper is reliable, what's wrong with shipping the 2 parts separately?Manh> i don't think so. what i read is that the $1000 limit is on the value of your good only.
The $500 cost is from B&H, they cost $1700 which in oz costs almost 60% more. In hongkong it's cheaper by couple hundred, Not to sure for shipping costs tho, my friend is in hongkong and said to also break up the items, jut don't know if its possible that customs an actually open it and do research and bust me
With 10% vat tax even mentions as gift with no box?I found the Customs web page that explains the tax breakdown. There's a Duty tax (5%) on consignments over $1000. GST is then calculated from the total of product+duty+postage. Bummer.
http://www.customs.gov.au/site/page5549.asp
As for spliting up the packages, the web page says Customs will still consider the multiple packages as one consignment. You'll have to send the two/three packages to different addresses to get around that.
I reckon you'd need to send packages separately too, say a week apart. Otherwise customs could theoretically just hold all your incoming packages for a month or two and then deem them all as one consignment.
Woah! $500 postage from the US? What a rip off.
Next time you buy something from the US, use a freight forwarder like www.priceusa.com.au
A few years ago, I had paid them to buy for me a $550 snowboard and had it shipped to me for about $120.
I don't have any experience with items over $1000 so I hope someone else can help you there.
Oh, and the $1000 limit needs to take into account of the shipping costs as well.