3

My wife and I have been spending more than 5 month in the US West Coast for working reasons. When we came here we brought with us some stuff what we thought we were going to need, mostly camping gear since we were going to go to some natural parks around here.

Now we are returning and, since we're going to to stop in NYC for two weeks for vacation we'd like to ship some things for the sake of convenience, mainly the camping gear we brought from Europe and perhaps some winter clothes.

We're a little bit lost about this. We think that we shouldn't pay anything in taxes or tariffs since we are personal belongings and we bought them in Europe, where we are shipping them.

I've started a shipment in the USPS website, but everything there seems to be focus in comercial shippings.

I guess that I need to enumerate everything is going to be in the box and weight it more or less and declare the approximate value... at least it's what the USPS interface is asking us.

I've been checking also this posting and some others in this community and seems that I have to make an additional declaration or something to send the things back to Finland without paying additional fees at customs.

Any additional directions, insights and ideas about how to ship your own good back to Europe, when you are European and you bought them in Europe, would be extremely appreciated.

Relaxed
  • 117,712
  • 10
  • 249
  • 436
lpuerto
  • 131
  • 3

1 Answers1

4

You still need to declare what you are shipping, whether it was bought in the USA or EU. Customs at the destination will make the final determination if duty is owed and they will instruct the local postal service to collect said duty when the parcel is delivered to you at home.

If your camping gear is a EU brand and well used, then likely customs will pass it through without duty. If it is a North American brand in new condition, they may not.

Customs inspectors are pretty well versed in determining what is new or used, what is from outside the EU, what is not. But from USPS's (or FedEx or UPS or DHL) point of view, they don't want to make this determination and will simply gather all details to forward with the package so that the customs department can.