USA Freight Forwarders - who do you use - what are they like?

[FenceFurniture]

within the last few days, The US Supreme Court ruled that internet shoppers in the US are liable to pay US State sales taxes.
I'm not sure if the sales tax is collected on behalf of the state / county within which the seller is located, or the state / county where the customer is located.
Either way, the effect COULD BE that Australian customers will be billed both US Sales tax and Australian GST.

I'm not sure if I can remember this correctly - it's been a while since the excellent folk at Lee Valley explained this to me (and I may have it in an email archive).

I think it's dependent on the receiving State, and whether or not the retailer has any kind of presence in that State (even just an office). LV said that because my address was in CA (Shipito) and they had no presence there, then there would be no Sales Tax. I'll try to find the email.

EDIT: Here it is, from March 2014, Lee Valley:
Sales Tax, just the two most hated words. We must charge sales tax in the USA for when we have a presence in that state. So for California we do not have a presence so that means we do not collect sales tax. We have a warehouse in New York State so that means all orders shipped to this state tax is charged. We collect it and submit it. There is one exception and that would not impact you. We do wood shows in the USA and while we are attending the show it is considered a presence and all orders taken at the show have tax. Being as how we normally don’t apply tax to that state we pay the tax. But for you shipping it would not be taxable to California. We ship orders to the USA from Ottawa Canada. We package them up and put them on our own truck and drive across the border to New York State and ship them from there. That way you never have to worry about customs and duties plus we have our own brokerage for this. If a USA person has a return they ship it to our New York State location and we make the arrangements to bring it across the border. As per my understanding you pay on the ship to location and for the Florida business, if he has a presence in California he must collect the tax and pay the state. It is always the seller who collects the tax and they are responsible for paying.


(back to me) This might explain why many of the freight forwarders have a presence in Oregon (0% tax).

[FenceFurniture]

So it would seem that the Freight Forwarding community is broken into two camps: thems that will consolidate packages, and thems that won't.

What I seem to have turned up so far:
Those who will consolidate packages:
1. Shipito who seem to have an appalling reputation these days, judging by what I have read on Whirlpool and elsewhere. Furthermore, I have my own experiences with Shipito where I sent about 50 packages in a two year period. Their prices have gone through the roof and I very much doubt that their service has followed - but it needed to. Furthermore they will not ship timber products except by the VERY expensive DHL option. In short, I can't see how they are viable.

2. UStoOZ from what I can ascertain they are price prohibitive. They have an excellent reputation for service, but for the money they charge....so they should.In short, I can't see how they are viable.

3. comGateway Pricing seems to be ok - not the cheapest but not too far off. Consolidation options for Prime customers seem pretty good. Might be viable

4. USA2me Only viable if you are doing several shipments per month, otherwise not viable.

5. Planet Express Dunno about these guys. There is some dodgy English used on the website, but the most concerning thing is the calculator. 22 pounds, 2x1x1 feet is the same as 10 kgs, 60x30x30cm but metric costs twice as much as imperial. Suspect not the sharpest knives in the block which could lead to grief.

6. MyUS Even more expensive than Shipito so I lost interest very quickly.


Those who will not consolidate:
1. AusPost ShopMate Too many restrictions

2. ShopNShip Flex Easily the cheapest freight rates, but with a USD155 per year fee. Added advantage of 24 addresses around the world (which for me means USA, Germany, France, maybe Italy, maybe China, maybe Japan). No cubic weight! Timber ok!

3. ShopNShip (regular) the next cheapest, and with no monthly or yearly fee. Same 24 addresses. No cubic weight! Timber ok!


SO it seems to me that if you do one or two packages per month that don't need consolidating then ShopNShip Flex is the go, and you can use several countries of origin.

If you need to consolidate I think I'm coming to the conclusion that comGateway is the only viable option.



If ShopNShip would consolidate then they would clean up.......

[crowie]

Nothing to complain about with that price Peter (and no, not off topic at all).

I received the parcel this morning - Two weeks from Texas USA to my house... Pretty good... Thank you UPS!!

[ian]

I'm not sure if I can remember this correctly - it's been a while since the excellent folk at Lee Valley explained this to me (and I may have it in an email archive).

EDIT: Here it is, from March 2014, Lee Valley:
Sales Tax, just the two most hated words. We must charge sales tax in the USA for when we have a presence in that state. So for California we do not have a presence so that means we do not collect sales tax. We have a warehouse in New York State so that means all orders shipped to this state tax is charged. We collect it and submit it. There is one exception and that would not impact you. We do wood shows in the USA and while we are attending the show it is considered a presence and all orders taken at the show have tax. Being as how we normally don’t apply tax to that state we pay the tax. But for you shipping it would not be taxable to California. We ship orders to the USA from Ottawa Canada. We package them up and put them on our own truck and drive across the border to New York State and ship them from there. That way you never have to worry about customs and duties plus we have our own brokerage for this. If a USA person has a return they ship it to our New York State location and we make the arrangements to bring it across the border. As per my understanding you pay on the ship to location and for the Florida business, if he has a presence in California he must collect the tax and pay the state. It is always the seller who collects the tax and they are responsible for paying.

OK, what Brett has found in his past emails is what changed in the last week or so.

The physical presence test no longer applies and all sales from a company like Lee Valley will attract sales tax if shipped to a US address, or provincial taxes if shipped to Canada, or GST if shipped direct to Australia.

The issue with using freight forwarders will be that US state / county sales tax will be accessed based on the location of the freight forwarder, to which Australian GST will also be added, either when the package is collected by UPS or at the AUS border.

Given that the US summer break is upon us, it's possible that it will some months before systems are properly sorted out.

[FenceFurniture]

So I think I'm right that it's the receiving state in the US that gets the tax at whatever their rate is? That is, if I purchase in State A where the tax is 7% but I ship to State B where it's 5% then the retailer has to collect 5% tax and send it to State B?

That means the poor old retailers will have to send tax to (I think) 43 different jurisdictions, and charge tax at however many different rates (there are ~7 states inc Oregon that have zero tax).

If all that is correct then the way around state tax as well as GST is for the freight forwarder to be in a zero tax state like Oregon> Shipito is one of them, but.....it costs more to freight from there than LA.....

Eeez difficult, as Manual once said.

[ian]

So I think I'm right that it's the receiving state in the US that gets the tax at whatever their rate is? That is, if I purchase in State A where the tax is 7% but I ship to State B where it's 5% then the retailer has to collect 5% tax and send it to State B?

That means the poor old retailers will have to send tax to (I think) 43 different jurisdictions, and charge tax at however many different rates (there are ~7 states inc Oregon that have zero tax).

it gets worse, most counties and cities also levy sales tax.
in some cases the state collects the tax and then distributes to the applicable county, in others the counties need to collect the tax independently.

[FenceFurniture]

Can anybody get a result with this online calculator from comGateway?
https://secure.comgateway.com/livequ...ost-calculator

All I get is blanks using Chrome and FF.

[FenceFurniture]

Bloody hell, what a weird evening. I've been having a chat with "Kim" at comGateway, trying to work out why their calculator is blank. After an hour and a half the chat just ended with no result. Suffice to say that Kim is seeing very different stuff to me.

So then I think I'll call Shop & Ship. Not a good idea. The supposed Sydney phone number goes through to a call centre in the Philipines. Joy oh joy. No, they are not S&S, they are Fastway. Long to short I think someone might contact me tomorrow.

[Pac man]

Yes can see the comgateway calculator on iPhone using Firefox

[FenceFurniture]

Yes but do you get $numbers?

[Pac man]

Nup

[Pac man]

Now that I’ve created an account using the page time an cost calculator I got a result.
Parcel Value : $50
Weight: 1kg
Express Shipping $33.60
Fuel Surcharge: $5.63
Shipping Insurance: $0.84

[Chris Parks]

I saw this today on SMC...https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....tax-collection

[FenceFurniture]

UStoOZ are right in the middle of changing to a less expensive carrier apparently, so that might make them a little more competitive.

In the meantime I'm doing some sample weight price comparisons across the known forwarders. It looks like USA2me might be ok, and they are a package consolidator (Houston, TX).

[ian]

I saw this today on SMC...https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....tax-collection

now that is a good read.

I don't think that I have ever laughed so much about a tax issue.

I particularly like the comment that there's a centuries old doctrine that Pennsylvania will not enforce the tax laws of other states.

Looks like there there is even more fun and games in store for the US congress.