Canada Taxes And Tobacco Weight

[a_shimoon]

I was expecting my order of Hookah Hub to come in yesterday, but it did not. I called UPS, they said it was held at customs for an inspection. I'm gonna get taxed.

So I decided to try something. I took two 50g boxes of Al Sultan Yellow Melon (the worst flavor ever). I weighed one package (unopened pack, no box) and it weighed about 41g. Then I took another identical one, washed out all the molasses, and then dried up the tobacco leaves, repacked it into the package. Then I weighed it. 11g.

Where I live (Alberta), they tax you $0.22 per GRAM. Therefore, 73% of the tax I'm paying is on molasses. Only 27% of the actual weight was tobacco.

If they tax me, I'm going to try to appeal it on these grounds. Our tobacco duty laws classify shisha tobacco as "manufactured tobacco", the same category as loose rolling tobacco, tobacco leaves, and pipe tobacco. There is no classification for shisha tobacco, so it gets lumped in with manufactured. I don't think its very legal to be taxing me $0.22 per gram of molasses.

For instance, if I were to import molasses and tobacco leaves in the same box, I would only be taxed on the tobacco. Just because it is mixed, why should I pay outrageous taxes? Somebody needs to update the laws here.

Have you guys ever had good/bad experiences with importing to Canada?

[chinamon]

ive only been taxed once when i ordered from social smoke. that is the only time ive ordered from them.
the other times i ordered from mnhookah and they were good at getting the package in to canada without customs inspection. one of the reasons is because they use USPS rather than UPS.

[a_shimoon]

Yeah, I normally try to avoid UPS, but a buddy of mine put in an order with UPS just recently and it got through no problem, so I figured I'd give it a try.

[jfaltous]

UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc have their own brokerage service built in to their shipping business... meaning its in their favor to charge duties on anything and everything because they make money off the brokerage fees. USPS on the other hand doesn't. Someone once mentioned that USPS and Canada Post have some sort of arrangement that's built into NAFTA that helps them avoid having to inspect packages the way that other shipping companies do, but I've never been able to confirm that.

If he's still around, gaia plateau (from Saskatchewan) once successfully appealed duties on the same grounds that you're attempting to. I think he also threw in the race/culture card which wouldn't hurt for you to try as well

In the future though, know who you're ordering from and make sure that they are capable of shipping to Canada the "proper" way. As chinamon mentioned, MNH is good with customs forms, as is WH. I've had success with other places like AFO and HL, but I've had to specifically tell them how I wanted it done. I think the limitations are $40 value on the customs form, which bumps up to $100 if marked as a gift... and then from there its easy to be creative with things like "cooking molasses" and "incense" and stuff in the description. I've gotten 20+ shipments from the states and not a single problem yet.

[chinamon]

i received my package from smoking-hookah.com yesterday.
their mailing address listed on their website is in new jersey so i thought the package would come from usa but it was shipped from israel.
the package had no customs declaration label on it (just a plain brown box with my address on one side of the box and return address on the opposite side). when i received the box it had yellow tape on it from canadian customs resealing it. there is a stamp on the box from the CBSA that says "examined & released" so i know they saw the contents of the box had 2x500g of nakhla. here is the funny part.....they never charged me any tobacco duties!!! so that makes me wonder if something has changed with their shisha tobacco importing laws or if i just got lucky.

[Hookah S Moka]

ya i have ordered from hookah kings and i had 4 250g boxes and one 500g carton and so far no taxes, i just ordered double this time and i am currently awaiting on shipment that was sent out tuesday, hopefully it gets here like they said on the 8th which the email i got from ups said it was the 8th too