Receipts for Customs?

Hi Ladies!

 

I have been reading alot of threads that mention having to bring receipts for the items that you have packed away to put into your guests OTT gift bags once at your resort. Many of these threads mention using faux-receipts too.

 

Why do you HAVE to bring these receipts?

 

Why are faux receipts the best to use? What is the minimum dollar amount that must be stated in order to NOT have to pay taxes on customs?

 

What happens if you do not HAVE these receipts?

 

Any advice you can offer will be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Hello Chantelle,

 

start by reading this thread :

 

http://bestdestinationwedding.com/forum/t41422

 

It should bring a lot of answers (why, dollar amount, what happens if not, etc)

 

Now you don't need faux receipts if your receipts show less than 300$ total by person (ie 600$ for you and FI).

I have seen this alot for Mexico, but does anyone know if this is an issues in the D.R.?

 

Jennifer

We had no probs in Mexico. Split the OOT bag stuff between four people and no questions asked. The customs forms actually say you only have to report if you are bringing over $10,000 (I think). Lucky you, if you can spend that on OOT bags!

I can't tell from your post which country you are travelling to. But if you are going to Mexico, I can tell you that I had all my real receipts with me for my OOT stuff and they searched one of our 3 suitcases and when I showed them the receipts that showed the total was for less than $600, everything was fine. People use the faux receipts when they didn't save the original ones - luckily I had read on the forum to save receipts just as I started buying OOT items.

The $10,000 limit is for CASH being brought into mexico. For goods that you are bringing that are also not for your personal use (i.e. OOT items), the reporting limit is $300 per person. They are worried about people bringing items in from the US for resale without paying tariffs. We were under the limit and did not report anything and split our OOT items among two bags, but one of them still got flagged for search - had disposable underwater cameras and OOT bags and some other things. I said I had receipts, she glanced at them for 2 seconds and looked at our bag and we were fine.

In order to remain under limit and not have 6 suitcases, we also gave items for reception to relatives to bring for us later since we didn't need them until wedding day.

Hmmm...does this apply to ALL locations outside of the country? We are going to St. Lucia, not Mexico.

 

We were also planning on splitting all of the items into two bags so that my parents could take one and we could take the other. None of the items purchased have a receipt value of over $300. The closest we have come is for our embroidered towels but the total for that was $241.

 

Thanks for all of your replies, ladies!

Thanks for the Post I had no clue that you had to do this! Does anyone if you have to do this for Dominican Republic?

Did anyone have issues with any first aid, hang over items? Advil, pepto bismol anything like that? I am making about 50 bags and will be putting a hangover kit together and just wanted to see if they frowned on the "drugs". Thanks!

I brought 100 individual packets of advil and about 60 packets of dramamine for my welcome bags no problem. But I was secretly worried about this too even though I had receipts and we were below the limit. So I stuck the drug packets in a plastic bag into the suitcase with just clothes so even if one of the other bags with cameras got flagged (which did happen) they would focus on that -- just in case.