Shipping to US/UK/AU from Canada

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to start selling a variety of audio cd's - is there anything I should do when packaging products for my customers that will make the customs clearance quick and smooth when shipping to the US/UK/AU from Canada?

Anyone with experience know if there are any import duties or tax on audio CD's coming into any of these countries - being aware of this may help with my pricing strategy.

Any thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Stan

Speaking on behalf of the Australian side, you have a maximum landing value of 1K before being open to a 10% GST. Now, of course if you are talking about shipping individual orders from Canada itself, then GST isn't going to be an issue for you.

It really comes down to what sort of stock load you are carrying as to what options you can choose from in regards to a distribution model. Low or no stock supplier method would give you no choice, orders would have to be shipped internationally item by item from Canada.

If you are dealing in decent stock volume, you have far more flexibility in designing an effective distribution platform!

For example, there are advantages of actually selling from within the countries that you market to over and above selling into them internationally. That requires you setting up some sort of a store and send platform in those countries, but as I said, it can be beneficial doing it that way.

What you need to do is set out a business plan, a road map of where you are now, where you want the business to be in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years and what processors you need to put in place along the way to make that happen.

Getting a plan down to begin with gives you long term direction, super important to long term success. Those that tend to make it up as they go along hit all sorts of bumps along the way, most of them unseen, and most of them cause a derailment because their is no process in place to ride them out.

I always say that research is king is this online game, but good planning is no court jester by any means!

I see that Marc's discussed what you can expect when shipping to Australia. I would find no one better than him to tell you more about that since he is from there and should be more aware about how things are charged :)

For the UK, this what I found through research (As I am not based in the UK)

Customs duty becomes payable if the value of the goods is over £135 but duty is waived if the amount of duty calculated is less than £9.

For more information please refer to this Link hidden: Login to view

For US shipments, the buyer is held liable to any taxes or duties, but only CBP (Customs and Board Protection) can make the final determination of what and how much is owed in duties - Link hidden: Login to view

Hope this helps.