So, you bought a bunch of stuff abroad over the $800 limit, and being a good citizen, you declared them when flying back to US on your customs form.
What was your experience with Customs like? Did it take a long time, or did they wave you through? Did the harass you, or sigh, that you actually gave them work to do?
Coming back from Scotland with $1000 in rare-ish Scotch Whiskey. About 4 liters over the 1 liter per person duty free allowance. Declared it all and… didn’t have to pay duty because the government was shut down (thanks John Boehner!)
My understanding is that duty is pretty affordable. If I read this PDFcorrectly (a big IF) we were expecting to pay between $2 and $5 a liter. The pdf shows duty rate in Proof Liters which I am not sure how to calculate.
Brought in a Turkish rug, which put us a tad over our household limit. All they cared about was that it wasn’t Iranian, and didn’t bother charging the extra duty )which we were ready to pay).
Looks like we could have been on the hook for excise taxas well, so that could have tacked on another $14 a bottle. Still worth it. Sorry I have no infor for you on wait times, etc.
Our rule of thumb is declare everything. If you fudge one thingthey will look suspiciously on everything else and you could be in for quite the adventure.