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Belgian wrote:The best part is the goggle-eyed response of 'you spent that much on XX bottles of beer?'
Always the worst part of the experience. This last time I just hid the two $45 bottles of De Dolle Reserva because I just didn't feel like it was worth the hassle!
Buying kegs is a much nicer experience - usually they are pretty impressed
Just came across the border into Alberta after 3 week vacation in the US. The benefit of coming into AB is that the person limit is 45.45L of alcohol, and you don't pay PST (SK limit is 17.6L, and PST is 5%).
We were over our duty free exemption by 51L (6 cases) on beer, and got sent inside to settle up. I had a huge stack of receipts with me for all the beer, but I conveniently showed them the one receipt from Costco for a $21 case of Fat Tire as an example. Border guy didn't bother looking at the rest of my receipts, and didn't ask anymore questions. So I only paid GST on $126, plus markup, which came to a grand total of $42, or approx 30 cents per 12oz of beer.
Considering I had spent over $600 US on beer and bourbon (55L of beer, 60oz bourbon), the additional duty and tax was peanuts.
Last edited by markaberrant on Thu Feb 21, 2013 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
My girlfriend and I crossed at the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia yesterday with a little over two cases of beer (around a day in the US) without any trouble at all. No fees, no questions. She just asked what we bought, we declared the "little over two cases" and went on.
Only hitch was after declaring what we bought she glanced at the back seat to see the 6 gallon brew bucket I had picked up and forgot to mention. Pretty awesome!
I've come to the conclusion that they're pretty lazy when you cross back into Sarnia. I've been across for 1 hour and have come back with a case and only got a raised eyebrow.
"A good light beer is one that doesn't taste like piss!" - Frank d'Angelo
Yeah, Sarnia's pretty laissez-faire about the alcohol. Last time I came back from Chicago and started rattling off on how many 12 oz's and how many bombers I had, they just gave up half-way through my spiel and waved me through.
Came back across the rainbow today after 24 hours with 3 people x 1 case each. We declared and got pulled into secondary inspection to make sure we weren't lying but didn't have to go in to pay duty.
When it comes to beer hauls I've seen some people with some pretty impressive amounts here. The information about bringing back kegs was interesting too.
Now, has anyone ever looked at bringing back more than 45L of beer? (The maximum allowed in Ontario).
Say you drive a minivan across the border in Ontario and over the course of 1 week you drive about 5000km total. Michigan, Illinois, Missourri, Minneapolis...
You pick up a couple of 30L kegs along the way and ohhh, 20 cases of beer.
Now, Manitoba is the only province that seemingly allows for unlimited beer to be brought back from the US, as long as you pay duty/taxes.
So you cross the border there, and then drive around Lake Superior, across Ontario and back home.
Now, let's say all of this beer, and the transportation/accommodation costs associated with getting it, are shared equally amongst your Bartowel buddies...kind of like a co-op.
At what point is such an endeavour worthwhile to all?
And when you go to cross at Manitoba they will still ask 'where do you call home?' and could folow with 'what are you planning to do in Manitoba?' etc. I guess what you say is up to you, that your declaration appears credible and not look sketchy due to all the alcohol.
Technically you are circumventing the Ontario international border regulations & bringing a high volume of alcohol across the Manitoba-Ontario border, possibly illegally.
Couldn`t you just make multiple trips back and forth across the border? As long as you had a place to safely keep the goods on either side while you are doing it.
