Hi All,
Can someone please let me know if accessories that is not expensive (say silver ear rings worth CAD 10) also need to be declared at the airport ? Is there is a value threshold to be followed while deciding which items qualify for declaration ?
Thanks in advance!
There is no minimum value threshold. Items obtained abroad and being imported (brought) into Canada need to be declared.
I am not clear to what extent individual items must be itemized, versus what can be declared as part of a group. I am not certain, for example, but I believe accessories like clothing can be described generally, rather than itemizing each individual item of clothing, and total cost or value (whichever is greater is the safest approach, although price paid documented by receipts works so long as that is not disproportionately less than the value) declared for the group of clothing items. I'd expect similarly for other
low-value accessories-like items, including jewelry, but whether to include this or that particular item as part of any generally described group of items is a personal judgment call, regarding which the safest approach is to simply list each item individually.
Like many other areas involving regulation, customs enforcement practices often vary to large extent due to a relatively lenient margin of discretion typically exercised by border officials. Kind of like speeding on expressways, where law enforcement does not strictly enforce the speed limit, it being too costly and time consuming, compared to the benefit to society, to stop and ticket everyone exceeding the speed limit. Which is to say it is highly unlikely a traveler will run into a problem due to not declaring a ten dollar item being imported, but the rule is to declare it and the failure to do so can result in penalties. Thus, like speeding, while the odds are very low that driving 15km over the limit on the expressway will trigger being stopped and ticketed, but if for whatever reason an officer has cause to suspect unsafe driving, doing 15km over can result in being ticketed and fined . . . similarly, if there is some reason for border officials to suspect misconduct or deception or an effort to import items without declaring them, or to under-report the value of items being imported, that changes the dynamics of the customs' transaction.
