Hi,

I'm going to New Hampshire in September (tax free state!) and want to buy an ipad while I'm there. I've looked at CBSA's website and can't work out what amount of duty I'd have to pay on bringing it back into Canada (I'm in NB). Anyone got any idea?

Thanks,
Lyn

Depends on how long you're staying there. If it's over your limit you'll have to pay taxes and duty. May be better ordering it from a store in Alberta.

I got let off bringing back my ipad - I was amazed, I'm wondering if she thought I said "eye pad" and didn't quite catch how much it cost.... I certainly didn't argue!

If you have to pay though, it's borderline not worth it, since the price is similar in Canada. As Ben says, might be worth trying to find a way to get one from AB.

There's no duty on personal computing devices (which I'd class this as), so it's whatever the tax is in NB.....

There's a sweet feeling when the customs officer waves you along after you have declared your shopping Its so nice of them

We're staying in the states for ten days so we will get the $750 allowance. I'll look into AB, thanks.

or be very sneaky and borrow a recepit from some one who has bought one in Canada and take it with you then if they ask on way back in -say you had it all along . . .

Hi
Yes that is what I would do,,,but if you get $750 allowance....an Ipad would probably be about that?
lol
Stef

Whatever you do don't do that. The customs people have serial number lists supplied by the major manufacterers and can generally tell where you bought it. Committing fraud to avoid customs duty is not something you want to be caught doing.

Of course they do...

It's actually pretty easy to identify where an ipad came from according to its serial number. There's two characters to identify its origin.... Whether the Canadian ones are the same as the US ones, I dunno....

There's always one !

Where on earth did you get that from? Big brother paranoia!

Personal experience in the UK - a colleague of mine got stopped on the way back from the HK (we were travelling together) and tried to claim that the shiny new laptop he was carrying had been bought in the UK. The UK customs officers certainly had the serial number information to hand for Sony. I can't say that's definitely the case for other makes but wouldn't like to bet on it.

Perhaps it is the case the serial number includes a code for which country or area the item was sold in.
Could it be that the revenuers don't actually have serial numbers but know the country codes and if you claim it was bought in a certain country and the code doesn't match your claim....bingo !

That's entirely possible too...not that it makes much difference. Having said that, Apple at least used to have an online publically accesible tool that would tell you which country something had been sold in, so I don't see why there would be any surprise that customs officers might use such a thing too.