Did you know that there is a page on one of the Taiwan Government websites that tells you how much tax there is to import certain products. My Taiwanese wife always checked this for me, but she is out today and I want to check how much tax there is to import a DVD Player/Recorder with a Hard Disk Drive. I think I remember the HDD is the clincher here that makes it cost more to import.
Can someone provide the URL or better yet, check on this for me? DVD Recorders with HDD are so expensive in Taiwan costing as little as NT$26,000 for one with a 80GB hdd at Costco and much more elsewhere, but in the USA they only cost NT$13,000 for the latest and greatest just released from Toshiba with a 160GB HDD and all of the bells and whistles (model # XS34). I want to just have it shipped to me from B&H Photo’s website in the USA as they ship internationally, but I am afraid that the import tax might be too substantial.
TNT: Thanks! Do you work for TNT the courier service?
By the way, can anyone else access that site int he thread? It seems to be down and I even tried many variations like dgoc.gov.tw which I also cannot access.
Lately, computers and peripherals in Taiwan are almost as expensive as in Belgium. Same goes for electronics and hifi stuff. Probably you can gain a little on the VAT part, but not too much.
In the old days I used to go to the world trade centre library to look it up in the official import tax books. So many different categories, hell. :fume: Was a load of work.
You could also get all the statistics on imported goods for the year passed.