Online purchases from other countries

[emad]

I'm posting here because the online retailers I've asked haven't been able to answer my questions and they just told me to ask people who've ordered online in the past. I live in Canada and I'm planning on buying some computer equipment (namely an mp3 player) from an online retailer. The best prices seem to be from US based stores since they're following msrp (in canada, MSRP is rediculously high compared to US). For what I want, it'll cost me $100 more to buy from Canada than from the US - plus the 4 month wait till the product is officially sold in retail stores up here. My brother won't place the order until he finds out how much duty we'll be paying. I know for certain that there's a 7% GST tax on all online orders. A friend of mine told me he was charged 8% duty for speakers but they fall under a different category as computer equipment but brokerage fee was absurdly high.

To my knowledge, computer equipment, tape players, cds, and vcr's (i got this from some brokerage site) don't have any duty on them.

Is this right? how have your experiences for this sort of thing been?

 

[milefile]

Living in America, I can get whatever I want domestically so I wouldn't know. You should've stayed.

 

[Seito4Counter]

I live in U.S. but bought some dvd equipment from malaysia and payed a 12% import tax. Check a Canadian tax site or something

 

[toyomatt84]

Picked up a model kit from Japan, cost me about the same as it does here for a regular model kit, but the shipping was $12 us.

 

[cm108kph]

I got a remote for my MiniDisc player from Japan... I don't think there were any taxes on it, it just cost a whole lot to ship.

 

[Mike Rotch]

I buy books from the States and the UK. The US is usually pretty good not charging taxes, and the UK places usually do a good job of getting my purchases lost in the post.