Hi All,

I always buy from another dealer in the USA, but now I am tempted to try out Penguin Magic. For those overseas (e.g. in UK, or Malaysia, Singapore) and have bought from Penguin Magic before, I would appreciate your insight to the shipping and especially about the custom tax charges incured.

The question is do you always get custom charges when buying from penguinmagic, and does penguinmagic label clearly on the outside of the package how much total your purchase is?

Cheers!

There is no difference buying from Penguin than buying from any other dealer in the US and the material is exported to another country. For most countries, including those listed, you will not get hit with a major customs duty. Duty is based on the commodity being imported and the issue is how it is described on the invoice. First let me be very clear here, it is not to your benefit to falsify documentation which is what your last statement implies.

If, for example, you are importing into the UK you get stuck with the "We hate the USA Tax", which is a ding that the EU puts on imports from the US. If you have a set of cups coming in and the value makes a formal entry required then the description of 'metal cups' is a lower duty than 'magic tricks' that run a a higher duty. The descriptions and value are taken off of the commercial invoice and it usually doesn't appear on the packing list, which is on the carton. If your getting less that a couple hundred dollars worth of goods and they are for your own use and not for resale the odds are that due to the high volume of goods into all those ports they will just push them through and be done with it.

Again, there is no additional anything buying from Penguin than anyone else in the US unless your other dealer was willing to falsify documentation.

If you have any specific questions let me know, I have over 20 years of experience in import and export regulation and law.

Posted: Jul 10, 2007 3:36pm
One thing I forgot. Last time I spoke with Penguin about this they had a distribution point in the UK. If that still is true and it isn't in a Free Trade Zone then for orders in the UK the issue doesn't exist. Also note that Malaysia does have an additional import tax but while I've done a huge amount of business there nothing below $50,000 was transacted so I'm not sure if they have taxes on low value items.

I had bad experience with customs b4....

my last order from magicdepot was bout $300, they marked it as gift... but still I had to pay about 20pounds of custom charges + a ridiculous 8pounds of handling charge! Just bcos they tax you they will add the so called handling charges!!! if you don't get tax there's no handling.. darn!

I called and check and they said anything over the value of 36pounds going into UK will be TAX!!! but it also depends highly on which courrier being used, from experience if using Fedex, DHL, Homedepot and similiar services, its highly going get the tax...

Once my friend was shipping his used computer into UK, and he had to pay bout 90pounds of custom and handling.. a nightmare.

I think its only able to avoid the charges if the seller is willing to mark the item value at very low... cos I hv checked in a few countries, and in malaysia it says 'even if its a present, if it is over XX ammount, it will be tax'..... cry...

THanks for your response MagicSanta. I am really hoping a Santa exist for magicgoods delivery

Malaysia has an issue where everything goes into a 'warehouse' and they charge for that, which is the handling they got you with. It is just a way for them to get a bit more money out of people but it is unfortunate that people like you get caught up in the extra cost. In the UK it sounds like your friend was going door to airport or airport to airport and the 90 pounds was for a formal entry. The benefit of using a DHL or TNT (TNT often is cheaper by the way yet not well known in the US) is the clearance is included UNLESS someone marks the little box saying that the consignee (you) will pick a carrier.

If it makes you feel better there are countries that have 100% plus duties and taxes. I've sent $4.00 worth of samples to Argentina and they tried to collect $100 in extra fees from the consignee, usually a broke student. It got so bad we stopped sending samples (of semiconductors) to that country. Same with Brazil only the issue was they wanted the Brazilian version of the consignees social security number so they could count the samples or sale as income! Then they tacked on extra fees. In Canada if you go ground they charge extra for customs but not if you go air, again unless someone checks the wrong box.

Remember something, and this may help you, customs really wants to know the value you are paying BUT the law is vague. You can have the replacement cost, meaning the wholesale cost, of the goods used or a standard market cost. For example I would send 100 books to the UK and the retail is $40.00 each. The thing is I'm sending it to be resold so the actual value is the replacement cost, or about $6.00 each. So rather than a duty based on US$4000.00 it is based on US$600.00. Also books and DVD can be shipped as what they are at the base, educational material, a lower to non-duty status in many countries. All legal. Say I'm sending bunches of color monte to the UK, if I say they are magic tricks, which are considered toys, high duty rate. Basically they are either printed cards or promotional items, lower to no duty rate.

There is a lot to it but I'll tell you this. I sent in a 23 year period millions and millions of dollars worth of goods, tens of thousands of individual shipments, and never really had a problem with customs or anything, cuz I knew what I was doing. Just PM me if you have a specific question. You can't get around Malaysia, they want every dime.... the UK you can actually check your costs on line by looking up duties etc. Good luck.

Wow... Thanks for the detail explanation. It helps me understand more now. Long time ago I used to thought only business get tax, and items for personal use never, but to my surprise and experience, everybody hv to pay if you don't know the way round

I guess its reality, if you know the tricks of the trade, there's always some other ways or loophole that you can go thru.

Ya.. from what I heard, the customs in malaysia checks everything and box.. and many occasions they ban many things from coming in, and not unheard of that things 'mysteriously' disappear even you use signed-for and track and trace services....

I have such a hideously low sense of morals myself that I prefer to buy from eBayers and small companies to whom I can write a note and basically ask them nicely to lie about the content value. This of course is a symptom of my flawed character, but it does help me to avoid this:

Here in Norway there is a 25% tax (VAT basically) on the import of everything that has a value above 200NOK, currently with our strong Krone around $34.

In addition to this you have to pay a small fee of some $18 for them to do you the favor of delivering the package to you. You can of course come and get it yourself, but they keep these foreign packages in a warehouse in an industrial area outside of the center of the city, to which there is no public transportation. In order to get there by car you have to drive through various companies' parking lots and so forth. It is unmarked on maps.

If you should get there somehow you have to go to five different stations and talk to various people who basically treat you like scum for having ordered a DVD from the evil empire outside of Europe. There is extensive waiting. And by then you have also had to wait a lot of extra days for them to send you a letter saying "we have your package..."

So one needs to find loopeholes. Or order less than $34 worth of merchandise, which seems to just exclude a lot of DVDs and books and also ends up costing you a lot of extra in overseas shipping.

So when the laws are made to abuse the individual's freedom, the individuals are made to abuse the law. It is an eternal struggle.

The reason they have VAT is because the countries assume people are under valuing products. The worse situation I ever faces was in India. Exported loads of stuff there then got notified (company, not me personally) that the Indian Customs decided everything was undervalued, it wasn't, but wanted an additional $50,000 or no more importing into India. We had to pay 'em.

Yes, that can happen here too. Just because a package is marked with a content value, it doesn't mean that they will accept that if they inspect it. (I remember now that the $18 charge I mentioned is their price for inspecting the package. A favor to me, they said in the letter. You have to pay the customs officials to inspect your mail! And if you go there yourself, they will graciously do you this service for free, just so that they can say that there exists an option to not pay this ransom.)

The unfairness of VAT is that it is paid over and over again on the same item. If I was to resell the goods I bought, then the buyer would have to pay VAT on it again. And the stuff I bought online to begin with was never tax free to begin with.

As I recall - the custom officials have the authority to wstimate the value by themselves. Normally, they have some product lists . .,

Yeah, that sounds very probable. Never actually occurred to me that they could have a list. Still, they won't find Lennart Green magic DVDs on that list I bet. They will mostly be able to guess a proper price for some new Hollywood DVD that 98% of the foreign customers have bought because it won't be out in their country for a while yet.

The trick is probably to make them not care. Not too big a package and an apparently boring content. No suspicious substances. Not much chance of any large sum of money being involved. They probably all dream of nailing Mr. Big. And there are faaaar too many packages coming in from abroad for them to check more than a few. People here buy everything from overseas since the prices are so absurd here.

The description is the key. If you are buying a DVD movie and the value shows as $5.00 then customs is going to think "gee, usually they run from $20 to $30 for a movie, I'm going to correct the value to $30". Luckily I won't put you all to sleep discussing valuation in detail but there is a lot to it. Now if you brought in a DVD as "promotional item not for resale" then the $5 would slide by most the time.

Something to keep in mind, in the US and many other countries customs is the only govt department that produces income above their budgets. That is what inspired countries to start tacking on to the bill. Europoe has the 'slap the US' tax, if I recall it is about 4%, just to punish people for purchasing from the US. In the US we have the harbor tax of 4% but it maxes out and doesn't kick in until a certain dollar point.