How much civil disobedience can you buy for $7.63?

The politeness of this letter is in no way commensurate with the amount of swearing that the precipitating incident invoked:

June 11, 2007

RE: Inventory Number LC XXX XXX XXXUS

CBSA Casual Refund Centre
1583 Hollis Street
Halifax NS
B3J 1V4

Dear Madam or Sir:

Today I received a package on which I believe an incorrect value for duty was assigned, and consequently I had to pay an incorrect amount of GST. This letter, along with the attached documentation, is to claim a refund.

The package contained one book which has a value of $45US. The sender’s declaration, which shows this is attached. At today’s exchange rate this is approximately $47.76CAN. However, the CBSA Postal Import Form lists the value for duty as $174.97CAN, which is obviously substantially more.

I believe I can see how this error occurred. The box was opened by customs, and inside the box along with the single book was an invoice. This is an invoice showing 5 books being ordered, for a total value of $165US. I assume that when the package was opened a Customs agent mistook this invoice as being a total for this shipment, rather than a total for an order that ships in several parts, and consequently valued this package at the total for all five books, not the total for the one book that was included.

It is the convention of this publisher to include the complete invoice with an partial shipment, and to just underline the particular books from that invoice that are included in the particular shipment. I have attached this invoice, and you can see how the one book that was shipped in this package was underlined, and has a value of $45.
Since this package only contained $45US worth of material, I believe that the correct CAN$ valuation would be $47.76, and thus the GST amount should be $2.87 rather than $10.50—the handling amount doesn’t matter, since it would be the same in either case—meaning that I am due a refund of $7.63 in incorrectly collected GST.

Sincerely,

Chris McLaren

So, some commentary: Yes, I realize this is $7.63, and it had already cost me well more than that in time and effort. It’s a principle thing.

I regularly get books from other countries, and every time I have to pay 6% GST on the declared value of the books. While I find this annoying, I can live with it. For a $45 book it’s $2.70. What does gall me a bit is that Customs then levels a $5 handling fee. This is, in essence, the $5 I have to pay for the privilege of being assessed the $2.70 tax. You see how that’s a bit galling. Every time I think about this it “gets my Irish up”, as my grandfather would say, but I’ve learned to live with it. (Although publishers who ship several books simultaneously as multiple individual shipments do piss me off, since I have to pay that extra $5 on each one.)

But this is a whole new level of annoying. The sheer monumental stupidity of assuming that the correct value of a box containing one book is not the value declared on the box, but rather the total value on an invoice for FIVE BOOKS is stunning. And then I’m always a little pissed when Customs opens my mail.

I’m getting that $7.63 back even if it takes me years!

The only upside is: Yay lovely book!

Also, I’m cranky because my barely-a-month-old iPod died today. Feh.