Importing question

This question has been on the minds of people living here for over 500 years!
Truly it has.

Nobody wants to pay the exhorbitant taxes, and few know how to calculate what they are supposed to pay. Oh, you say that this item is supposed to pay a 20% import tax? Hummm. Okay, 20% import tax + a special 13% tax to make up for revenues lost by the elimination of the 13% exchange commission that was deemed illegal + a tax on the insurance you paid for + a tax on the cost of transportation => all told probably closer to 45% taxes..IF YOU ARE LUCKY!

Anyway, that is not what you asked.

There are a lot of Dominican freight forwarders in New York City, Boston and other places--Paterson, NJ., that will ship stuff door to door for $50 - $75 dollars a box...and the boxes are big.

Then there are operations like Business Mail, Caribbean Parcel Service, Express Parcel Service that will do the same thing for a bit more money.
I can recommend Business Mail--they will move a household worth of furniture if you want.

HB

And I don't think anybody is going to guarantee you what the price will be.

The best you can hope for is that they will promise to negotiate the best deal they can and pass the savings on to you.

You will never know what the deal they negotiated was or how much they are making off of you but you will not get your stuff untill you pay whatever they ask you to.

Can you get a binding ruling from DR Customs for duty etc on a particular item that you will be importing?

They have a 10 year old database of products with the "official" value of each. If they do it by the book, this is the amount they will charge taxes on, your invoices will be ignored.

If you have a "special relationship" with someone at customs you may get your invoice taken into consideration. But they can do it by the book or not, it's their book and you don't get to read it.

At the end of the day this is an island, customs is the one sure stranglehold the government has on trade and their largest individual source of income and they have no interest in letting it slip.

Wholesalers often have "special relationships" with customs, or they charge a whole lot to their customers or both.

The reason I stopped wholesaling is that I couldn't deal with the variables, it is impossible to plan when you have no idea what your goods cost you from one shipment to the next.

Case in point:
When the Big Three (Lama, Corripio, and RadioCenter) found out the implications of Law 28-01, and saw what was going to be assembled up in Monte Cristi, they used their "special relaionship" with the head of customs to mount a campaign of discredit agains the companies that were establishing the assembly plants.
End result=> the plants will sell their products to the big three only..

A "firm quote" would most likely be like Jello..

And, this is why contraband is so prevalent-500 years of experience!!

Just like in NYC, nobody buy "retail" ..I can get it for you wholesale..

What you might do is establish a relationship with one of the freight forwarders and see just what they can do for you. Face to face sure beats what we can tell you.

HB

You will most likely not get a freight forwarder to give you a firm quote, and if you do it will be a very high one because even they don't know how much they will end up paying untill the goods are delivered and they will want some breathing room.

Either that or they will straight up lie to you and when it's time to deliver the goods they will demand more money than what they quoted.

The bottom line is that nobody knows exactly what its going to cost to import something and nobody is going to lose money for your goods.

You should budget between 50% and 100% of the original cost of goods for combined transportation and import duties on most goods and occasionally you will be pleasantly surprised, not often and not nearly as often as you will be tearing your hair out.