A rather sorry state our postal service has become. Pathetic.
Dexter Ang wrote:
No I'm not selling these CDs for 12900 Pesos. In fact I don't even have them. They were shipped. And they are at the Makati Post Office (Window 1). I had 50 CDs of the x86/LiveCD combo shipped to me. I was hoping to distribute them to fellow plug'ers. Unfortunately I did not see the declaration form stuck on the box. I would assume that, for things free, Canonical either declared them as "free" or "$1" for customs purposes. I told the Post Office guy that these were free CDs. They had to count them. They of course counted them as 100 CDs since it was a 2 CD set each piece.
Now I have no idea how the customs guy came about to the tax amount of 12,900+ Pesos. I'm assuming he saw me dressed nicely (in office attire), and that the CDs looked very nicely packaged, and probably assumed that I was gonna sell them (which he didn't even ask me), and probably assumed that the CDs were important enough for me that I'd pick them up myself. I'd love to see the law that states that taxes on CDs are on a per-piece basis whether or not that are free*.
Anyway, I didn't bother even asking for a lower tax amount as the time to waste wasn't worth it. I've had free CDs and other items shipped before (albeit not this many), but I was never taxed on them before.
So this serves as a warning/FYI I guess. Makati Post Office. Window 1. The customs guy that sits behind a desk behind the counter. Has glasses, with his feet always up on the table without shoes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not pissed (well a little for getting taxed roughly $230 without basis). I was actually laughing all the way to the office. =)
* As I'm unfamiliar with customs laws, I'd love to really get a reference of this for future use. Especially for tax exemptions on free/promotional items (limits, etc.).
That's all. Have a nice day folks. =)
dex -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
-- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
