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New York state installation

1/7/17       
Up North Member

Hi Guys,

We are presently quoting a job to be installed in the New York state (not in the city of New York). As this is our first project out of Quebec, I just wanted to check if any of you had any advice.

Is there anything we should be aware of? Can we do the installation ourselves or do we need to subcontract it? What about shipping and custom? Any good Broker you know of?paperwork?

Thanks!

1/8/17       #2: New York state installation ...
Chris Member

Website: http://rangate.com

Hi Up North,

If the product can be considered as made it Canada, it will be duty free under NAFTA. If it is not qualified under NAFTA, a customs filing procedure of some sort is needed, and it depends on the value of the products being imported into the U.S. So check it out here: http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/agr-acc/nafta-
alena/questions.aspx?lang=en
You will need to provide documentation when exporting and importing showing the product's qualification under NAFTA. You may still need to hire a broker to do the actual filing (to ease the importation logistics and without delaying the deliver). I assume your shipment will go on a LTL or FTL truck; ask your trucking quote to include customs brokerage and charges.

If your product is not qualified under NAFTA, someone will need to pay for potential duty and taxes. so the questions would be:
1) Are you paying for the US import brokerage, customs and duties for the goods being delivered to your US customer?
2) Or is your job negotiated in such a way that your customer is responsible to pay for brokerage, customs and duties?
3) Or a combination of?

Check out the US Tariff Schedule here:
https://hts.usitc.gov/ to find out what your products duty rate could be if it is NOT qualified for NAFTA. Note, there are other necessary government fees including Merchandise Fees that are tagged on top of this tariff. The % listed is ONLY the tariff portion.

The importation value should be the one that says on the invoice (not the cost of your product). And if this single day shipment's value totals under US$800.00, it currently qualifies under Section 321 (no duty is needed).

If there is any duty needing to be assessed, there are a few ways to go about this.
1) If you owe a U.S. business, your U.S. business can then act as an importer of record. You can obtain a broker by signing a Power of Attorney to file the Customs on your behalf. The broker will perform the necessary filing for you and pay for the duty/taxes for you in advance. The government filing charges are transparent and can be obtained through your broker after filing. So you will pay for the brokerage (service), filing fees, duties and taxes.
2) Your customer is the importer of record. In this case, you are shipping without any responsibility to do any importation except, as a shipper, you will need to provide a commercial invoice to the carrier and your customer. You will also specify COD or your customer's broker so that filing can be done prior to importation / delivery. Note, COD WILL include brokerage charges performed by the carrier besides duties and taxes. So your customer should be aware of this.
3) There may be a choice of a combination of 1) and 2) above. You can discuss this with your customer / broker. This would be more complex but doable.

I always recommend having your carrier company doing the customs filing. This way, you have a "one stop shop" for quotes and actual moving of product. Only obtain customs broker separately if a) your carrier does not perform such task, b) the cost is super high with your carrier, or c) you import regularly and you want to streamline your importations.

It is not impossible to file the paperwork yourself, but it will take many hours, possibly a trip to the Customs Office to actually pay for all the charges, and a delay in delivering your product since carrier will NOT deliver to anyone (still in bond) without customs released. Depending on the value of the shipment and the broker hired, the brokerage fee could be $0 to $95 (or higher for higher value of goods).

Finally when importing wood products into the U.S., don't forget to file the Lacey Act form. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/lacey_act/downloads/declarationform.pdf . This form needs to be sent with the shipment and to be filed with customs.

Let me know if you need the Customs Brokerage and LTL Forwarder services. I am glad to refer you to the companies I use for our business.

By the way, goods coming from the US into Canada is very much similar, although the duty/tariff rate is significantly different when goods are not qualified under NAFTA.

All the best,

Chris

NAFTA FAQ

1/9/17       #4: New York state installation ...
Up north

Hi Chris,

Thanks a lot for your detailed response!

I'll let you know if I need your broker info (Thanks for offering). Someone already gave me a company so I'll start with that.

Thanks again!


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