I came to the attention of Customs and Border Patrol today.
I am attempting to import a wooden pen storage box, which is partially broken but which I think I can repair back to original or close-to-original condition. Apparently the foreign sender declared a value high enough that I have to fill out a form with CBP to establish my identity, even to the point of providing my social security number. For a person like me who tries to stay under everyone’s radar, this is not a welcome development.
Thanks, foreign vendor. I will not be giving you a favorable feedback, regardless of the merits of the item, if I ever actually receive it.
The reason this is in IMHO is that I want to know what is that dollar limit threshold, over which this item was apparently declared?
If the item was shipped to you via International Postal Servic and has a declared value of less than $2000 and is not in a special control category, CBP normally will not require additional paperwork, but if it’s worth more than $800, it will require you to pay import duties and fees. However, CBP does reserve the right to require additional documentation for any imported items.
If it was shipped Freight, you have to clear it, which includes additional documentation, regardless of value.
I’m guessing from what you wrote that it was shipped International Postal Service with a declared value less than $800. If that’s all true, the declared value had nothing to do with CBP requiring additional documentation from you. At a guess, either you happened to be randomly selected for heightened scrutiny, or the fact that it was a wooden object drew extra scrutiny from CBP (wood and wooden items often require extra customs scrutiny because they can contain invasive species of wood-eating insects), or both.
And, BTW, I’m with Miller - I’m unclear why you seem to be upset with the vendor for obeying the law and truthfully providing CBP with the information they are legally required to.
The item was shipped via FedEx (which I now realize is probably a first for me, everything else I’ve ever gotten has been small enough for the post). I don’t know what the declared value was, the vendor would have provided that on sending. What I paid was under $400, and I probably overpaid at that. I just hope they didn’t make a mistake and declare the value in Yen.
The first thing that drew government attention was the lack of a Toxic Substances Declaration, which I then provided, but which should have been provided by the vendor. And if they had, the rest of this might not have happened. Because it was only after I provided that, that FedEx came back and said I wasn’t “on file” and could I please fill out this nice form.
There were at least two things wrong with providing my SSN in this scenario. The first was that I wasn’t providing it directly to the government but to a FedEx bureaucrat. The second was that the only way to send it was either by US mail, or by email. The bureaucrat tried to assure me that their email is secure, which is jolly, but I don’t know how secure my email is. Nevertheless, I did that, for various reasons, and now I’m considering freezing my credit accounts, because who knows.
Finally, if 9/11 taught us nothing else, it’s that government agencies don’t talk to each other, even today in the era of the Dept. of Homeland Security. The IRS and the SS Administration have my SS number, and I doubt that either of them were having conversations with CBP about it or me. Now there’s that little window of information flying around, and pardon me if I don’t like it.