My wife and I are currently traveling in Ireland and will be looking to bring back whiskey for ourselves, friends, and family. I understand the personal exemptions are 1.14L/person. Let’s say as an individual I bring back 3 570ml bottles priced at $50, $80, and $100 CAD, for example. 2 of those bottles will be exempt under my personal allowance, but I will have to pay duties on 1 of them. How does CBSA determine which bottle I pay additional duties on?
Edit: Entering through Ontario
Be honest and you normally won’t get charged from being up to twice over. So you can probably get away with up to 4L between the two of you. Probably.
Duties estimator: https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/dte-acl/est-cal-eng.html. Duties are based off province of residence, not entry. (ie, you pay Manitoba duties, even if you land/cross in Ontario)
You chose which products are your exempt ones, I would recommend exempting your most expensive bottles.
I also live in Ontario so I’d be paying Ontario duties regardless. Unfortunately it looks like that duty calculator doesn’t list alcohol as an option. We would likely only be exceeding our personal limits by 1-2 standard bottles each at most so it’s good to know we may get lucky and not have to pay the duties. I’d read on a few other forums that CBSA will often ask for the price of the least expensive bottle(s) if they do but I couldn’t find that officially confirmed anywhere. Given that it looks like current duties are as high as ~80% for whiskey I was hoping that would be the case!
I have never been charged and I have brought a lot of liquor back over the years. Just be up front about it. They are more concerned about commercial operations than a consumer bringing back a couple hard to find bottles.
Are you sure about #3? I think technically the rule may be that if you’re over, the entire amount is dutiable
You are allowed the stated amount as personal exemption. Any amount over personal exemption is exercisable.
Having more than the personal limit does not preclude personal exemption.
Having an amount that is higher than personal use (subjective by the agent) puts you at importation, and removes personal exemption. For example 12 cases of wine is not going to fly as personal use if you were out of the country for a week, it would fly if you were on secondment to another country for three years and are moving back.
That’s good to know!