Has anyone ordered stuff from companies like Warmoth or steward Macdonald? I can find out shipping cost but how much taxes does the government impose if I were to have those stuff shipped here? will it be unreasonable (like more than 20%)?
for years I’ve been severely tempted to order a Warmoth custom guitar and one of their Gecko basses… So far I haven’t mostly since I can never make up my mind on the details, there are just too many temptations, and Warmoth build such fantastic guitars… A friend of mine who’s the guitar tech guy at EME music here in Taichung, has ordered and built lots of Warmoth guitars since I told him about the site and he has a small stock of Warmoth necks lying around… so it is feasible…
As far as import duty goes, I know that for complete instruments the import duty is high, for example a mate of mine just ordered a carbon fiber Rainsong guitar (nice but a bit gimicky)… they hit him with something like 18% duty (including 5% VAT)… I’m sure however that as long as it’s made very clear to customs that you are importing components only, not finished instruments, the duty will be considerably lower… just how much lower I just don’t know, but I’d speculate probably around 10%…
If you go ahead and do it… let us know…
i imported a guitar and did not incur any duty.
sure… depends on the total declared value on the waybill as to whether they’ll want to tax you or not… the lower the declared value the less interested they are in import duties… the same is true if the guitar is 2nd hand etc…
The guitar that my mate imported was new and insured and valued at NT$85,000 so they for sure hit it with the import duty…
You can get around it with undervalued waybills, but I know that Warmoth won’t do that…
I asked EME about it and they said the duties are whatever the customs agent feels like that time of the day… could be from 5 to 20 percent… I asked the treasury department and they said that anything over NT 3000 is taxed… how much they couldnt say. unless I can get a friend to order the stuff then ship it here using undervalued waybill… but I dont have any friends in the USA that I have contacts with…
This information is probably completely wrong, but I heard that if you get it sent by regular post there’s a good chance of not having to pay tax, but if you use an express delivery service they’ll always tax it.
I just received a steel-bodied hand built resophonic ukulele from Australia sent via regular post with a waybill of a bit under NT$20,000 and I didn’t have to pay any duty.
Of course, the customs guys probably felt that being seen in public playing a ukulele was punishment enough and that I didn’t need any further grief from them. 
Bulllshit. Another TW is disorganised pile of rubbish. I have had things sent USPS and not had tariff applied, whereas Fedex, DHL etc tend to cop it - I believe it is part of Fedex, DHL’s service charter that the goods you ship throguh them will be ‘automatically’ handled by Customs.
When I have had to pay duty I have recieved a phone call from an English speaking Customs person that has been super professional and helpful, faxing me a copoy of the relevant tariff etc. TW tariffs are all available online so they simply cannot rip you off.
FYI - I have paid tariff in TW on approx. 10 items, ranging from a US$3,000 guitar to a US$1500 bicycle…
[quote=“AWOL”]
FYI - I have paid tariff in TW on approx. 10 items, ranging from a US$3,000 guitar to a US$1500 bicycle…[/quote]
How much did you have to pay tariff for those items? did they vary alot (like one 5% and another 20%) or was it all the same?