Snus is about 50% water. I wonder if you could argue the duty based on that. Taxing based on weight isn't really fair with a product like moist tobacco. What if I made a tobacco cake that weighed 1kg, but only had 2g of tobacco in it. Do you get taxed on 2g, or 1kg?
Hi from Alberta Canada
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It appears that Quebec has the lowest provincial tobacco tax
http://www.canlii.org/en/qc/laws/sta...rsq-c-i-2.html
8. Every person must, at the time of a retail sale of tobacco in Québec, pay a tobacco consumer tax equal to
~
(d) $0.1585 per gram of any tobacco other than cigarettes, loose tobacco, leaf tobacco or cigars.
By my calculations (with 8.5%PST in Quebec) my order above would work out to about $12/can.
There is a large black market for cigarettes in Alberta, which are sold by the First Nations people. As far as I'm aware, they are exempt from both duty and tobacco tax...
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Hullo fellow Albertan! I don't mean to hijack or plug anything, but I've been ordering from Northerner for the last 4 months.
I believe this to be important since they can ship the snus from the USA and arrives within a week.
My FIRST ever order was thru snuscentral and I ordered 10tins.
Of course we know that the CBSA gets a hold of something that large and tags it.
You end up with a 75$ customs bill.
I mention northerner because I've been ordering 2-3 cans ONCE A WEEK and shipping them to Alberta. No customs, no duty, ends up in my mail box ready to rock.
Been this way for 4 months. A littler higher on the postage, but you average out to $4-5 a tin now including shipping.
No big deal. Way better than the $20-22 it costs when you get nailed with Customs.
Just something I thought I would mention and share.
Hope this helps.!
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Thanks for the tip blackjack, I will definitely try doing 3 cans or less from the Northerner US warehouse. I have been hit with customs charges twice now, and that really starts to make the snus expensive.
I stopped by the cigar store the other day, but they don't have any Swedish snus. The clerk was familiar with it, and sounded like he'd be interested in selling it, but we may have to wait until there is a distribution deal between Swedish Match and Phillip Morris International? Even then I don't think it'd be much cheaper. He said the price on 24g of loose tobacco (Copenhagen) is $21 or $24, something like that.
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These duties/taxes seem to be completely random, I have no explanation for it.
I had another order in the mail from buysnus before I got the tip from blackjack, and both of the packages got hit with duty and tax. Each package was pretty much the same in value and weight, but one was opened, and the other was not. The one that was opened and inspected, they charged me $20.68. Fair enough. The one that wasn't opened was listed under the same classification, but the total payable was more than 3 times as much, $68.20.
I filled out the refund form, and am going to mail it in as soon as possible. I don't know if the office is in a cave somewhere without internet access, but I couldn't find any way to submit this form electronically. I took pictures of the package contents, I hope that they can access the link and don't start giving me the run-around.
Here is a link to the form if anyone else needs it:
http://www.cbsa.gc.ca/import/postal-...ation-eng.html
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Just an update to let you all know that this process is ongoing. The CBSA has rejected my request for a partial refund, and asked for more information. Specifically, they want proof that my order from BuySnus was sent in 2 envelopes (it was), and they want some kind of proof of the contents and weights of each of the packages. Along with my original copies of the copies of the forms that the CBSA stuck to my envelopes.
I'll give it another shot.
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I'm resurrecting this old thread to let you guys know that I got my refund cheque in the mail today. I was refunded $43 on a $68 charge. That process took about 3 months overall, at least in part due to my lack of time to work on it. I definitely won't be trying that 'readjustment' process again. I'm currently trying to get a "reassessment" done by CBSA, but that seems to be going nowhere fast as well. The Partyboat idea is looking better all the time
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