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Ooooh...shiny!
Jan. 21st, 2005 12:14 am
Question 1. When will I finally buy more beer? I've been holding it off with various excuses ever since I got back from winter break.
Customs duties and taxes suck. Phed put the actual price of the knife (ooh it's shiny) on the customs declaration rather than the sale price he bought it at. I was charged 7% for duties on the knife and 6% on the CD (the Apocalyptica "Bittersweet" single), plus 7% GST on their declared values. It used to be that if you manage to fit a CD into a padded envelope and send it as lettermail they won't put taxes on it (how else would I have gotten those other Finnish and Dutch CDs taxfree?).
So yes. I paid $21.01 in those freaking taxes. The worker at the post office was wondering why I had exact change in hand before she even rang it up on the register - she didn't realize that the value I owed them was written on the back of the pick-up slip.
It seems that Canada Post has finally caught up to the rest of the world by finally introducing the whole carbon-paper sticker for customs declaration, where you have to write both your and the recipient's address and detail the items' value and place of origin and stuff, the amount of postage, whether it's airmail or regular, and you sign the bottom, not just a list of contents and not even a signature...(However, I think it's just a new standard for postal corporations worldwide because I know for sure Finland didn't have such complicated forms in the past either - old European Customs stickers only required basically the list of items/values and a signature).
I also hate how Customs generally likes to abuse your packages when they open them for inspection. Phed had both items wrapped in sheets of newspaper and the inspectors didn't wrap them back up after looking at them, and also did a real shoddy job of taping the box back together (although it was probably already a bit beat up from being shipped regular post) and the CD case has a little bit of a crack in the corner. It's like that time I got my "Hallucinations of Holland" book back from its year-long foray in NL, the packaging was sort of like the kind of fold-over packaging for books they use for paperbacks if you mail order off Chapters online, and Customs opened it, dunno why, were they thinking it looked like a really flat brick or were they thinking I was trying to smuggle cannabis leaves in?
Anyway, I also don't remember asking him to include an entire issue of Helsingin Sanomat in the box, just a few pages...
Okay, now that I have something proper to refer to (the Finnish newspaper), I can finally get to writing the date in my diary in proper, fully inflected Finnish (because I was still doing it wrong).
Customs duties and taxes suck. Phed put the actual price of the knife (ooh it's shiny) on the customs declaration rather than the sale price he bought it at. I was charged 7% for duties on the knife and 6% on the CD (the Apocalyptica "Bittersweet" single), plus 7% GST on their declared values. It used to be that if you manage to fit a CD into a padded envelope and send it as lettermail they won't put taxes on it (how else would I have gotten those other Finnish and Dutch CDs taxfree?).
So yes. I paid $21.01 in those freaking taxes. The worker at the post office was wondering why I had exact change in hand before she even rang it up on the register - she didn't realize that the value I owed them was written on the back of the pick-up slip.
It seems that Canada Post has finally caught up to the rest of the world by finally introducing the whole carbon-paper sticker for customs declaration, where you have to write both your and the recipient's address and detail the items' value and place of origin and stuff, the amount of postage, whether it's airmail or regular, and you sign the bottom, not just a list of contents and not even a signature...(However, I think it's just a new standard for postal corporations worldwide because I know for sure Finland didn't have such complicated forms in the past either - old European Customs stickers only required basically the list of items/values and a signature).
I also hate how Customs generally likes to abuse your packages when they open them for inspection. Phed had both items wrapped in sheets of newspaper and the inspectors didn't wrap them back up after looking at them, and also did a real shoddy job of taping the box back together (although it was probably already a bit beat up from being shipped regular post) and the CD case has a little bit of a crack in the corner. It's like that time I got my "Hallucinations of Holland" book back from its year-long foray in NL, the packaging was sort of like the kind of fold-over packaging for books they use for paperbacks if you mail order off Chapters online, and Customs opened it, dunno why, were they thinking it looked like a really flat brick or were they thinking I was trying to smuggle cannabis leaves in?
Anyway, I also don't remember asking him to include an entire issue of Helsingin Sanomat in the box, just a few pages...
Okay, now that I have something proper to refer to (the Finnish newspaper), I can finally get to writing the date in my diary in proper, fully inflected Finnish (because I was still doing it wrong).
