If you buy a new or used flute from England or Ireland and import to U.S. what duties/taxes/other costs are there?
Woodwind instruments have an import duty of 4.9%. Bagpipes are duty free. I believe that antique instruments (pre-1900?) are also duty free. You can get information on the web from the “Harmonized Tariff Schedule”, the part dealing with musical instruments is:
http://dataweb.usitc.gov/SCRIPTS/tariff/0302c92.pdf
Dave Copley
Loveland, Ohio
That’s nuts! Bagpipes and piano accordians are free? Is this some form of conspiracy?
Out of curiousity, since I’m thinking of ordering a flute form M&E, who pays the tarrif? Is that usually covered by shipping costs? Or, would I have to pay to pick up the package?
I’d never thought of anything like this…
Eric
Well, as you know, the United States is suffering from a severe shortage of bagpipe and piano accordion players and so the government is doing everything it can to encourage the purchase of these instruments. Just wait, subsidies will be next.
Seriously though, a 4.9 percent tax on flutes isn’t so bad. I recently moved to Canada and I shudder to think what I’ll have to pay in duty on the two flutes that I have coming to me – one from a maker in the US and another from England. I think it’s something like 15 percent. There are ways to sneak around the duty, but for frequent border crossers like me it’s not worth the risk – customs officials sometimes ask for a receipt and if you haven’t paid the duty you can be penalized or have your instrument confiscated. On my last two trips to the States I got hassled in both directions about my flutes.
I don’t understand Brad, why would you “declare” your flutes anyway? They don’t have any way to know if you bought them in the states or if you own them already. So if you have your flutes delivered in Vermont for example, and go get them yourself, you’d save some money no?
Edit:
Well, this isnt something I’d discuss on a public board, gulp!
Well, that’s the problem. Here’s what happened: They opened up my trunk and looked in my bags (standard procedure) and saw the flute case. What’s that? they asked. It’s a flute, I said. Did you register this with customs? they said. “No,” I said. They then explained to me that if I had not registered it or had no record of where and when I’d bought it, I could be charged duty on it when I return to Canada, since Canada customs might assume I’d purchased it in the United States during my trip there. As it happens, I did include my flutes on the inventory of all my belongings that I filed with Canada customs when I moved here, and that explanation satisfied the customs official in Canada who asked me about my flutes on my way back home.
Interesting. I bought a flute from Michael Grinter in May 2000. He shipped it directly to me from his shop in Australia, with the last leg of the journey being the US Postal Service. I picked up the package at my local post office in lieu of having it dropped on my doorstep while I was off at work. And I paid no duty on the purchase, while according to the above I should have paid 4.9% (which would have been about $50 based on the price of the flute).
So I guess I broke the law, but how was I able to do that? In order for me to be charged duty, the post office has to know that the contents of the package contain something on which duty is due. But they didn’t ask me what was in the box before they delivered it, so I’m guessing that Michael Grinter must have been asked to declare what was in the package when he shipped it. Did he lie and say it was something other than a flute? Did he admit that it was a musical instrument but use some “magic word” in saying so that caused it to fall into the duty-free category? Or did the Australian and/or US post office just screw up? Wish I knew…
Sometimes the magic word is “repair” – if you send a flute back to the maker for repair they can return it marked that way and you don’t pay duty on it. Of course some people abuse that loophole.
However, my experience with two flutes that I received from overseas makers was the same as yours: they were delivered by the Post Office and nobody asked me to pay duty on them. I just assumed at the time that there was no import fee.
Here in Canada, people generally advise you to get parcels delivered by the post office instead of UPS. Anything shipped by UPS ends up at customs first, and you have to pay duty COD when the parcel arrives. I ordered some tea from In Pursuit of Tea http://www.truetea.com and was socked with a CDN $25 duty on my US $40 purchase, making this truly the most expensive tea I’ve ever drunk – we steeped those leaves a few times to get our money’s worth! (Great tea, though, I do highly recommend it – try their greens, whites, and oolongs; it’s the real stuff imported from small family farms in China and a totally different experience from the tea you’ll find in even the best specialty markets)
Hmm i’m currently waiting a piccolo to come in to the UK from the US. Its a gift for me, so I’m not sure if i will have to pay duty on it. I hope not! 
As far as I know, you don’t have to pay duty on gifts sent through the post, although there are probably restrictions (no duty on gifts up to a certain monetary value, for example).
I was told that up to $1600 is not intercepted coming into Canada.
Check out these sites from Revenue Canada:
http://www.ccra-adrc.gc.ca/customs/business/importing/courier/postal/ind_duty_free-e.html
and
http://www.ccra-adrc.gc.ca/E/pub/cp/rc4044/rc4044-e.html#P284_19912
Hi,
I was checking out the Canada Customs website the other day (new flute soon on the way and all) and managed to dig up a PDF of their customs tariff. If you look at page 4 of the below link it seems to indicate that there is no customs charge for flutes, of course I haven’t dug through the document as it has something like 10 billion pages of jargon. Still, I thought it might be of interest to the other Canadian flute players on the list.
http://www.ccra-adrc.gc.ca/customs/general/publications/tariff2003/chap92ne.pdf
Another handy way to slip your instrument through customs is to have the maker, if they’re willing, declare the flute as a “repair” rather than a new instrument. I’ve heard of that done before with success.
All the best,
Wes