Hey everyone, if anyone has any experience with shipping internationally I wonder if you could help me?
I will be sending out a fursuit from UK to USA very soon and I am a litte confused with the best way to do so, regarding customs and tax.
Obviously I want my buyer to pay as little as possible on top of what they are already paying. But I still want to be able to insure the item to the full amount. If I mark it as a gift, or reduce the declared value, I am worried that my insurance on the item may not be valid up to the full amount, or that the discrepancies might arouse suspicion at customs check.
My best possible idea for now, for both me and the buyer, is attaching an invoice for total cost of physical materials (so not including payment for time/effort/skill), declaring this amount on the slip, but they paying for insurance for the full amount actually paying by the buyer. This way, the 'vat' which seems to be the main cost, will be much much less.
That way also, it looks legit to customs officials/everything is accounted for and if they notice that the declared value is different to insured value they will see that that it's because only the cost of materials have been declared... Which, is not particularly suspicious as I could easily have taken the commission as a practice price and just asked purely for material costs for all they know, but would still like full reimbursement for my time/effort/skill (hence the higher insurance), should anything be lost or damage. And if anything IS lost or damaged in the post I can always still pull out my insurance and show them my PayPal history to prove how much it is actually worth.
Does this make sense? Would it be dangerous to do it this way? And would I still be able to claim the full insurance amount with this even though declared amount was smaller?
Any other suggestions or advice?
Thanks, Feral. :>
I will be sending out a fursuit from UK to USA very soon and I am a litte confused with the best way to do so, regarding customs and tax.
Obviously I want my buyer to pay as little as possible on top of what they are already paying. But I still want to be able to insure the item to the full amount. If I mark it as a gift, or reduce the declared value, I am worried that my insurance on the item may not be valid up to the full amount, or that the discrepancies might arouse suspicion at customs check.
My best possible idea for now, for both me and the buyer, is attaching an invoice for total cost of physical materials (so not including payment for time/effort/skill), declaring this amount on the slip, but they paying for insurance for the full amount actually paying by the buyer. This way, the 'vat' which seems to be the main cost, will be much much less.
That way also, it looks legit to customs officials/everything is accounted for and if they notice that the declared value is different to insured value they will see that that it's because only the cost of materials have been declared... Which, is not particularly suspicious as I could easily have taken the commission as a practice price and just asked purely for material costs for all they know, but would still like full reimbursement for my time/effort/skill (hence the higher insurance), should anything be lost or damage. And if anything IS lost or damaged in the post I can always still pull out my insurance and show them my PayPal history to prove how much it is actually worth.
Does this make sense? Would it be dangerous to do it this way? And would I still be able to claim the full insurance amount with this even though declared amount was smaller?
Any other suggestions or advice?
Thanks, Feral. :>