I work for a company that has offices in the US and in Canada. I asked our administrative assistant to send an external hard drive to our Ottawa office, where some data will be copied onto it, and then sent back here. It's just a huge chunk of data that is ridiculous to copy over a WAN.

I was asked to provide a price for the drive, at which point it occurred to me that an import duty is probably going to charged.

Now I'm not trying to avoid paying a duty if it's required, but it seems silly to do so in this case. They don't charge a duty when I take my laptop up there.

Is there some special incantation that I can put on the package that states that it will only be there for a few days and then be sent right back?

Just value it at $20 CAD (maybe use $15 US) and be done with it. If you try to mark it with special instructions along with a high value you'll just be asking for trouble.

You can still include something like "Temporary import" or "Contents will return to US"

The other alternative is to pay the taxes (you won't be charged any other duties) and then try to get them refunded. You won't likely be refunded any handling or brokerage fees however unless the drive is being sent via postal service.

Good luck. I've worked peripherally with shipping gear to/from countries for short time periods. Canada is always regarded as the biggest pain to deal with.

Here's what our expediter required for about two pallets worth of assorted electronics that were staying for a one week conference:

The email thread I pulled this out of ended with a coworkers request for the serial number on the ptouch labeler.

If you ship the item via USPS and Canada Post you won't need to specify any of that stuff. Just send it as an expedited parcel.

Once you start to get fancy by trying to say that this is a temporary import then you will have to provide all sorts of documents. Believe me, the same is true for such imports into the US, especially when working trade shows.

When USA companies ship stuff to me here in Canada, they have their brokerage service take care of it all. Nobody pays taxes on the shipments.

Note that there is NO duty for goods originating in the USA, but taxes can still be applied without a good brokerage firm.

Cheers

I had to fill out that information on every piece of equipment (to include the keyboards and mice) when I was doing international demonstrations. It wasn't just for Canda, but everywhere I went.