insert witty title here

Yesterday I had to drive down to Washington state to meet the moving truck.

Get this: it cost $1890.00 to ship their belongings from Alabama to Seattle, but it would have cost an additional $2900.00 to ship it from Seattle to Chilliwack - a distance of only 140 miles.

Bringing their effects back across the border and into Canada, I had to pay the 14% import tax on the declared value of everything being shipped. Since I wound up having to wait in the Washington truck stop for five hours before the moving van arrived, I had plenty of time to put a value to everything on our copy of the manifest.

As it was all household goods and personal effects, coming up with a value was a matter of making realistic guesses. If I estimated too low a value, the folks at Customs would want to look at everything and come up with their own estimated value. If I estimated too high, then I'd be paying more import tax than I should.

In the end, the import tax came to $110.04. That plus the U-haul rental of $215.00 still worked out to be a heck of a lot less than $2900.00.


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