United States Import Duty
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Last week I ordered the Syphyo and Link. It was shipped from France to Indianapolis, Indiana through DHL Express. The US Customs and Border Protection, Cincinnati office, put an import duty of $304.25 on it. I have 5 days to accept the duty and am trying to resolve it with DHL. Has anyone else experienced this issue?
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@jdickerson
That sounds excessive. I just took delivery of a flute from the UK and got a duty bill for $53 total on a $1400 invoice. -
@jimhanks said in United States Import Duty:
@jdickerson
That sounds excessive. I just took delivery of a flute from the UK and got a duty bill for $53 total on a $1400 invoice.The UK is no longer a part of the EU so therefore cannot be used in any comparison of import duty costs of goods arriving into the USA from an EU country such as France. A separate trade agreement is in place between the UK and the USA nowadays.
In addition electronic equipment may be charged at a different rate than a purely acoustic instrument like a flute. -
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@jdickerson
I thought I would give an update. I finally got hold of DHL Express International Shipments office to protest the $304 duty that Customs had assessed. I told them they were using the wrong HS Code to assess the import duty and taxes. The Harmonized System is a standardized numerical method of classifying traded products. It is used by customs authorities around the world to identify products when assessing duties and taxes and for gathering statistics. I advised this is an electronic wind instrument, similar to an electronic flute, and the proper HS Code should have been:HS Code: 9205.90.20 "Wind musical instrument"
They resubmitted the description to Customs last week and Customs agreed that is a duty free item and should not have been assessed. DHL delivered the Sylphyo to me that same day., duty free.
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@jdickerson Thank you for sharing this information. I did not know about HS codes and wondered why I sometimes pay duty costs and sometimes not, for similar devices. From your story I learn that we should not be too submissive but insist to check the HS code. Everybody can communicate directly with the customs office if the transportation company cannot help.
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@peter-ostry Customs here in the US only inspects a random sample of packages. If they see something on X-ray or looks suspicious they will open it but it is a miniscule number that gets opened. They assess their duty based on the HS Code that the shipper gives them. Transit companies like DHL etc can be kind of lazy in transmitting the correct codes. There are around 5,300 codes so mistakes are easy to make. Matthias said he will start shipping with the code I cited earlier. That should help but then again DHL etc could still abbreviate the HS Code. If that happens a quick call to their international shipping department can quickly resolve it.
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@jdickerson Ordered one from Thomann and import charges were around 42.00 .
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Result 👍. Good for you 😁
