Customs declaration on bringing cash into a country vs gold jewelry

Factual Questions
1

Well, I know that you must make a customs declaration when you are bringing in more than X amount of currency, but what about if you bring it in in the form of a big gold rope chain necklace with a spot value of over, say $10,000 USD?

Does anyone know of any case where a person has been punnished or had their property confiscated for failing to declare a big gold rope chain that you bought overseas? How would the authorities know that you bought it overseas? Couldn’t you just say you’ve always had it?

2

When you enter the country you fill out a customs declaration form. If you purchased goods abroad that cost more than your duty-free allowance, you have to pay customs duty on the goods.

If you don’t declare that “big gold rope chain,” you are subject to fine or imprisonment if they catch you smuggling it.

3

SFAIK the customs declaration explicitly aks about what you are bringing in in cash. If they wanted to know about valuable artefacts, they’d ask.

4

They also want to know about anything that you acquired overseas that you are bringing in with you. There is a list of prohibited articles, as well as customs duties that might be payable on some purchases. And they do ask. You are expected t oknow the limits, and you are informed that you are required to disclose anything that needs to be declared

5

Customs and Border Patrol also has broad powers to seize potential contraband. If they have probable cause to believe that your donkey rope is being imported illegally as undeclared property that is trying to evade duties, they do not have to get a search warrant from a judge to take it away from you, beginning what could be a forfeiture case.

There’s something about such seizures as being actions against the property as opposed to the person holding the property, but I don’t understand that well enough to explain it.

ETA: and it’s pretty clear that UDS hasn’t carefully read a customs declaration form.

6

I have read many customs declarations forms. (And possibly more carefully than you have.)

The most recent form I read was the Australian form, where the relevant question is:

“Are you bringing into Australia AUD$10,000 or more in Australian or foreign currency equivalent?”. Nothing about valuable goods as an alternative to cash. (You have to make a similar declaration if you are taking currency out of Australia.)

There’s a separate question asking about goods obtained overseas with a combined value of more than AUD$900. But that’s an entirely different matter (as the very different monetary threshold indicates). That question is concerned with the evasion of tax on imported goods, and you only have to answer the question with respect to goods that you bought overseas (or duty-free). And of course you don’t have to answer it at all when you’re taking goods out of Australia. By contrast, you have to answer the cash question no matter where you got the cash (and of course there’s no import duty on cash, even if you have obtained it overseas), and whether you’re bringing it in or bringing it out. If you’re wearing or carrying AUD$10,000 of jewelry you don’t have to say anything about that in answer to the cash question. But if you are bringing it in, and have obtained it overseas, they you need to declare it in answer to the imported goods question.

The US form asks about “cash or monetary instruments over $10,000 US or foreign equivalent”. Nothing about jewelry or other goods there. Again, you have to declare it both entering and leaving. A separate question asks travellers to declare the value of goods they are carrying that they purchased or obtained abroad; unlike cash, this question only applies on entry, there’s no $10,000 limit, and the question is confined to what you have obtained abroad.

The EU customs declaration form is similar - entering or leaving, you have to declare currency or bearer-negotiable monetary instruments that you are carrying, regardless of source, over a threshold of EUR 10,000, but there is no general requirement to declare goods that you are carrying of a similar value. Goods only have to be declared on entering, and only if you obtained them abroad and are importing them; in that case the threshold for declaration is EUR 430.

So, in all the countries that I know of, you can lawfully avoid carrying (and therefore declaring) cash by buying jewelry, and then wearing or carrying it across the border. But do this at home, before you leave; if you buy it while you’re abroad, you’ll need to declare it as an import (and in that case you’ll almost certainly end up paying duty on it, which you wouldn’t do with the cash).

7

UDS, the question is predicated on buying an expensive item overseas and not declaring it or paying duty on it. The forms you describe all require such a purchase to be declared. The OP is just asking how the authorities would catch you if you didn’t declare the item.

8

Yes, but you might be the one who has to prove that. For example, in the USA:

9

UDS nailed the distinction. The OP asked about evading the monetary declaration.

There are two quite distinct issues.

One - are you evading some tax/duty that we think you should pay?
Two - are you moving lots of money about in a manner that would evade the money reporting regulations?

The OP’s question is all about evading the second of these.

Gold is a bit of a special case. In its base form - say cast as ingots - it might be hard to argue that it isn’t a monetary instrument. What if you had a necklace that was simply made up of one once ingots all strung together? Artistic creation or bland attempt to evade money laundering detection? I guess if you were some sort of Rap star such a necklace might be the height of fashion. However, if you were bringing such a necklace in, you would probably be better off arguing that it was just a monetary instrument. There is no penalty for moving money about, well not unless it is in support of illegal activities. So you would avoid the duty on the necklace.

10

Yes, thank you, and Ravenman.

In my, ahem, hypothetical case, what if the money you wanted to bring in to the country was taxable at an extremely high rate if it was known how you got it. So for that reason you wanted to bring it in secretly - no declarations.
No one’s jewelry gets confiscated does it? Especially if it was just one chain?

11

Here’s a Customs and Border Patrol auction that has two pieces of jewelry - one looking fairly cheap and another is a nice watch with two karats of diamonds.

http://cwsmarketing.com/gp/pompano-beach-FL-february16-23-2016.html

12

TheU.S customs form asks for the value of goods that will stay in the US if you are a non-resident,. If you bring in jewellery which you intend to wear to your friends wedding, that is ok, if on the other hand it’s for your friend as a gift then customs applies.

You will be advised to be careful though, since both terrorists and money launderers use jewellery to transport funds, so LEA will be watching you.

13

Better surely to buy some diamonds and swallow them. As I understand it this is SOP for crooks who want to move valuables around without the authorities knowing. Of course - I would certainly not advise anyone to actually do that.

14

Litigation to formalize seizure of assets is done in rem, meaning under a fiction that the property is the defendant. This is as opposed to in personam, which is the normal course of things and in which the defendant is a person. This derives from the civil procedures in effect in the 1800s for cases where a property owner was not known (such as when a ship was interdicted without proper bills of lading).

See, for example, United States v. One 1985 Cadillac Seville (and a lot of money). It’s a drug forfeiture case not involving customs, but the principle is the same.

You can find much funnier in rem defendants, too - like US v. 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins. The Wikipedia article on in rem jurisdiction has some of the more amusing case styles.

15

Ok, I’ll say it.

Band name.

16

Obligatory Monty Python sketch link…

17

I don’t think anyone addressed this bit; what if you claim that you had that gold chain with you when you left the US?

18

The government has the burden of proving (by a preponderance of the evidence) that you didn’t.

19

I remember the first time I went overseas (to China in 1985) I took my camera and lenses to some sort of office at the airport in the US where they noted the models and serial numbers on a form, which they gave me a copy of. The purpose of the form was to show customs on my return as proof that I had left the US with the equipment. Upon return I was never asked for the form, and had never worried about obtaining such documentation since. Not sure if you can even get such documentation any more…

20

I used to do this for some serious camera gear and laptops (back when a laptop was a pretty rare and expensive thing to own.) I got questioned about the laptops a few times, and once had to show the documentation. The fact that it was an Apple laptop seemed to satisfy them once - for reasons I never quite understood.

What I gathered was that once the goods were clearly not brand new, they lost interest. A one year old laptop never garnered a second look, and a camera that wasn’t clearly the latest model and utterly mint similarly. The interest seemed to more about bringing things in that could be instantly sold - ie were you actually engaged in business - such as grey marketing.