Need to hire someone to help!

@refectio Can you do business with people in the US without incurring prohibitive duties? I asked because I was looking a couple of years back at retiring to Ecuador and doing repair by mail, but duties made that impossible.

@mayer I don't pretend to be an expert in cross-border import/export but here is my high level understanding of the situation, specifically USA-Canada.

The FTA accord, signed by Ronald Reagan and which later became NAFTA, signed by GHW Bush, allows the shipment of goods and services across the USA-Canada-Mexico border without duties or tariffs.

That means you can pretty much ship whatever you want across the border, minus some exceptions, without your local government assigning an import tariff or duty. Local, state or federal taxes may apply depending on the value but not tariffs.

@mayer continued...

Practically speaking, if someone in the USA ships me something and declares it as a low value item, let's say ~20$, then I will not have to pay anything to receive it. If the declared value is high, let's say 200$, then I will pay a brokerage fee to perceive any applicable taxes on it's value.

Likewise when if I sell something, the US government will impose taxes on anything above a certain value and depending on the shipping method, you will be charged a brokerage fee. USPS is the less greedy and UPS is the most when it comes to brokerage fees.

Repairs are somewhat different in that you are not buying or selling a product. The board you receive is defective and already purchased, taxes and all.

I don't know how things would work if you were in Ecuador.

Perhaps there is some trade attorney on this board who can shed some light.

So if @capulet678 Rebecca wanted you to do the repair, she would just click on your icon and email you the request?

@mayer Yes, someone could just go to my site, set up a ticket and mail me the part for repair.

I called Canada Borders Services Agency to be sure. Sending boards for repair constitutes temporary import:

Generally, all goods being imported temporarily, as long as they are not being imported for sale, for lease, or for further manufacturing or processing, will qualify for customs duty-free entry under tariff item No. 9993.00.00.

A “repair” is defined as a corrective maintenance activity that restores a good to its “as-finished” condition and goods temporarily imported to be repaired are eligible for customs duty relief under tariff item No. 9993.00.00.

http://cbsa.gc.ca/publications/dm-md/d8/...

I won't presume to say it's the same in the USA, I'd have to do some research.