When you bring in goods from overseas, there are some complexities involved, and the US customs department will make your job just a little bit harder–or maybe, a lot harder, depending on how you approach it.
If you’re working with an overseas supplier, they will take care of most of the paperwork; all you’ll have to do is pay the customs bill. But if you’re overseas yourself acquiring goods, and you want to ship them back to yourself in the States, you’ll have quite a lot of paperwork to do. Your shipping company can give you a good idea of what you need, and can probably provide you with the paperwork.
You will complete a bill of goods, which shows exactly what is in the box–and here’s where a lot of importers spend unnecessary money on customs duties. On this list, you need to itemize everything. But what you need to realize is that tariffs are enormously complex, and you need to be very precise. For example, the tariff you will pay to receive a box full of cotton shirts will be different from the tariff on a box full of silk shirts. The same holds true for any item, and you always must specify as much detail as possible. Have a box of chopsticks? If you simply list it as “chopsticks,” customs may delay your shipment, because they don’t know what they’re made out of. Say “wooden chopsticks,” “ceramic chopsticks,” or “plastic chopsticks,” to be more specific. You’ll also have to specify the country of origin, failing to do so can also cause delays. And so, the tip of the day is this: Be painfully specific, even when it’s obvious. Customs officials never make assumptions, and if you don’t explicitly say what they need to know, they’ll send your paperwork back to you.
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