A CANADIAN'S GUIDE TO BRINGING ALCOHOL BACK ACROSS THE U.S. BORDER We've given you a detailed round-up of cross-border shopping regulations, but here's a more detailed discussion of limits on bringing alcohol across the Canadian-American border. • What You Can Bring Back within 24 hours • Over 48 hours • After 7 days • Alcohol Taxes and Duties • Shipping Alcohol to Yourself • Hot Tips for Crossing the Border with Booze Heading down to Seattle for a concert and unsure of what to do with your leftover six-pack? Catching a ballgame in Detroit and hoping to bring some microbrews home to celebrate? Want to return from your Napa Valley vineyard tour with a few bottle? Here's our fool-proof guide to moving across the Canada-U.S. border with alcohol. UNDER 24 HOURS (AKA SAME-DAY CROSS BORDER SHOPPING) Sorry. No personal exemptions. You have to declare and pay duties and taxes for any alcohol that you bring back into Canada if you're doing a trip of less than one day. If you could just pop across the border and buy a few bottles of wine, would the half of our population who live close enough to America to drive there in a few hours ever shop at their local liquor store? You can roll the dice and “forget” about a bottle in your luggage, but if you're unlucky and you get searched you could be delayed, harassed, flagged, and/or charged the duties anyhow. It's your call. AFTER 48 HOURS This is the ticket. After 48 hours, your personal exemption shoots up to goods valuing $800 and your “personal exemption” kicks in: you can bring back a two-four of beer (8.5 litres) or two bottles of wine (1.5 litres) or one bottle of liquor (1.14 litres) without paying taxes or duties. The personal exemption applies to everyone travelling in your vehicle who is above the legal drinking age in their province of residence, so if you can fit all of those bottles and all of your non-drinking friends in a minivan, load them up and camp out for a few days so that you can combine exemptions. AFTER 7 DAYS Your alcohol can travel separately from you. The personal exemption does not change. HOW MUCH YOU HAVE TO PAY IN DUTIES AND TAXES ON ALCOHOL That of course doesn't mean that you can't bring alcohol back across the border on a same-day trip. In fact, you can bring up to 45 litres of alcohol at a time for personal use across the border at any time as long as you declare it and pay the duties and taxes. The duties are governed by the ever-changing, byzantine schedule of Canadian tariffs that cover trade with other countries. The taxes you pay depend on your province of entry – provincial or harmonized sales taxes will apply, the amount varying from province-to-province. Check out the chart below: Canadian Provincial and Territorial Tax Rates Province Total Sales Tax (%) Province Total Sales Tax (%) Alberta 5 Nunavut 5 British Columbia 12 Ontario 13 Manitoba 13 Prince Edward Island 14 New Brunswick 13 Quebec 15 Newfoundland and Labrador 13 Saskatchewan 10 Northwest Territories 5 Yukon 5 Nova Scotia 15 Ontario's liquor monopoly, the LCBO, has a series of helpful charts outlining the standard duty and taxes for importing alcohol to that province, and the rules more or less apply across the country. You must be legal drinking age, and you have to bring or ship the alcohol to your province of residence. The 45 litres can be any combination of wine, liquor or beer, and you have to produce receipts for your purchases. In general, expect the cost of your beer and liquor to double and the price of your wine to increase by 60% once you've paid duties and taxes at the border. Because of the lower price of alcohol in America, that means an average case of 24 beer will basically reach the Canadian price for the same when you bring it across the border. Will you save money? No. But you can access a wide range of specialty items unavailable in Canada for modest extra costs. The tightly regulated alcohol markets in Quebec, Ontario, and Nova Scotia make this an especially attractive proposition — the more freewheeling alcohol policies of the western provinces mean much greater diversity in liquor store offerings, so it's best to check if your local stores offer the wine of your dreams before you plan that road trip.

• published: 24 Jun 2015
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