34 Customs

Customs

Please read the following information about customs regulations and charges carefully and share it with your family and friends. Paying close attention to this information can potentially save you a significant amount of money and needless hassle.

Theree is a fee for all packages that enter Germany from a non-EU country in addition to possible customs charges. This means that regardless of the value of the package, there is a minimum “Auslagepauschale” of €6 for each package that you receive from the U.S., in addition to other charges based on the value of the package. Unless it is a package that is valuable and needs to be insured, you may want to recommend to your parents to “underestimate” the value of items, especially if they are sending you already used items! For more information, visit the FAQs page of the Deutsche Post: https://www.deutschepost.de/de/b/briefe-ins-ausland/haeufige-fragen.html Some other mail servicers such as GLS charge even higher fees for their customs processing.

Parcels mailed from the U.S. to Germany require a customs declaration form, and what gets written on this form often has serious consequences for the terms and conditions of delivery in Germany. The customs declaration form needs to list the contents, the dollar value of the contents, and whether the contents are a gift or merchandise. It is highly advisable always to declare some low-balled dollar value (think resale value through the Goodwill or flea market prices); packages without any declared value often get flagged by customs and need to be collected in person on the opposite side of town.

In recent years, we have noticed that package that only hold personal items, even when they only used personal items such as winter clothes, or packages that have been declared a gift, were subject to a German import tax of 13.5% in almost all cases. In some cases, this struck us as not entirely logical, but it has to do with the fact that it is near impossible to prove to customs authorities that such “imported” personal effects will, indeed, be exported again at the end of the year – and the compliance costs for tracking such personal mailings are just prohibitive. For packages shipped by a merchant, import taxes will have to be paid in any case.

The only sure-fire way to prevent having to pay customs seems to be packing everything up and paying for an extra suitcase to bring with you on the plane. But that may not always be practical and, therefore, in some instances you will probably just have to pay the customs or import duty invoice.

Once you have received a notice from customs, it is important to have invoices and/or a letter from the sender to present to the customs office. Even if you are the sender, include such a letter with the shipment itself as a routine matter. The following sample letter can be readily adapted for specific shipments. It is perfectly fine to write such a letter to customs in English.

A word of advice about insuring packages sent by regular mail: whether you are mailing from the U.S. or from Germany, you would be well advised to insure a package if it contains a very valuable item (a camera, for example), especially if you name it on the customs declaration. The labels are read by many eyes along the way. For packages that do not contain anything particularly valuable, it is best to avoid using insurance or, if desired, to take out relatively low insurance. Customs officers, too, will use the “insured amount” listed on the customs declaration form as one benchmark for making a customs assessment.

Packages sent by express mail service or by courier, such as FedEx, UPS or DHL, are in a separate category regarding customs. These carriers are obliged to clear customs before delivering packages to the recipient. Consequently, these mailings arrive in Freiburg with some delay (up to two weeks) and the carrier has often already advanced the customs charges. You will be required to repay any customs charges immediately upon delivery plus the carrier’s fees. FedEx, for example, charges €13 for each package where customs had been advanced.

This is not cheap by any means, but UPS has been known to charge an astonishing €32 in fees in addition to customs charges. We recommend, therefore, not using UPS for any shipment that might generate a customs charge (especially electronics). You should also know that German customs regulations stipulate that the cost of transportation (the mailing or shipping cost) is deemed part of the cost basis used to calculate customs or import taxes. A more expensive express shipment will therefore generate a higher customs charge than a package with the same content sent by regular U.S. mail. For all such courier and delivery services it holds true that there is no possibility of negotiating a customs waiver.

When ordering goods through the Internet, you should be aware that if you have things sent directly from a company outside the European Union, these goods are “merchandise” and therefore subject to customs. And even though the product information on the web may state that your desired book or CD is available within two days, it will not reach Freiburg that quickly. Delays are the rule rather than the exception.