The guy is raving, if he had imported it, he was going to get ripped off by private corporations not by the government.
There are no duties on importing US agricultural equipment parts into Canada, HST is max 15% so $1.50 extra. At $10 it would fit under the de minimis tax/duty value which is CAD$20, so he wouldn't even have to pay tax on it and no broker is necessary.
What did him in was the shipping cost plus UPS and a few other carriers charging totally unnecessary $20+ brokerage fees for low value shipments.
Thanks for this comment. Duty? Customs? On a 10 dollar part? Especially for agricultural purposes - this guy is a little off his rocker. It seems like he tried to buy a part, found out shipping was expensive and the seller wanted to use a broker (probably $20), neither of which have anything to do with regulations.
There are options to paying the custom broker, but none of them are really great.
He is allowed to do the custom clearance himself instead of using the shipper's broker. He just needs to get the paperwork and take them physically into his local CBSA office, then get the CBSA paperwork back to the shipping company.
He could also have the item sent to a mailbox in the US and then pick it up from there.
Of course, the person has a business to run, so it probably would make more sense to just pay the broker ($20 + percentage of the Tax for fronting the money) to do rather than to spend an hour on handling paperwork and lining up at the office on one item or drive to the US and back.
There's no good option to import something, you pay through the nose where brokerage fees greatly exceed the value of taxes collected on most items. The fees are deductible, but it's still an expense.
In theory he should have been under the exemption, can't speak to that. But $20 is extremely low.
There are no duties on importing US agricultural equipment parts into Canada, HST is max 15% so $1.50 extra. At $10 it would fit under the de minimis tax/duty value which is CAD$20, so he wouldn't even have to pay tax on it and no broker is necessary.
What did him in was the shipping cost plus UPS and a few other carriers charging totally unnecessary $20+ brokerage fees for low value shipments.