Quote:
Originally Posted by kindlekitten
Is it cost prohibitive to ship your bike?
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That depends on your definition of 'prohibitive.'
The actual shipping costs would be less than 1/4 of a container, if that much. About as much as our personal stuff we'll be shipping. (A 'container' being one of those metal boxes you see loaded onto 18-wheelers. Together probably about 1/3 of a container. Not really that expensive. Not cheap. But not ridiculous...
But Thailand charges Import Duties on EVERYTHING. And I mean EVERYTHING. You pay customs charges on used underwear, half bottles of mustard, old paperback books, and everything else you can think of. They have HUGE books full of the % to pay on every item you can imagine. Unfortunately, often that percentage is 300%-400% of the retail cost of an new item... as in the case of cars or motorcycles. When we move there the last time, we shipped about 30 boxes of household stuff, (about as much as would fit in an old VW microbus) and was hit with a Import Duty of $12,000 USD.
Fortunately, if you are an old Asia hand, you know that all that is needed is to find the right person to give a little 'gift' to... and so we paid a $30 USD gift to one official and a $20 USD gift to another official and onl $450 USD to Customs and That was easy because everything was in sealed shipping boxes. No one could see inside. A motorcycle would be different. It would be assessed at about $60,000 USD import tax, and because it's visible, a lot more people would have to be paid off and at a higher rate to get it down, and probably only down to about the cost of a new bike.
In Thailand, you can pay your way out of a speeding ticket (about $5) or a murder charge, but that costs more.
Stitchawl