The Auswine Forum

Does anyone know what taxes and customs duty has to be paid on imported wine. How is this assessed?? I have about 24 bottles of some Aussie wine purchased overseas and some champagne that I want to bring back home.

Cheers

Gerry

It is best to speak with a customs broker. I know a friend who imported over 100 bottles of whiskey into NZ and was able to get exemption on the duties & taxes as he could provide proof that it was a collection and not for sale. Not sure about the rules & regulations here. You could try one of the wine forwarders and their brokers should be able to help you out. Suggestions would be JF Hillebrand, Giorgio Gori, Schenker Logistics. They'd be your best bets.

I've previously brought back up to nine bottles of wine / port/ champagne and have just declared them at customs ad I've never been charged anything. Saying that, that was back in the days of being able to chuck a six pack in your hand luggage and then a couple of well packed bottles in your big bag.

Coming back from NZ recently I brought back seven bottles but you can't bring anything back in your hand luggage anymore so they had to be packed in my big bag, taking my bag 10kgs over the limit. I think I ended up paying $NZ20 in excess luggage charges, which wasn't too bad really, but nothing at customs (even though I also bought my limit in duty free spirits on arrival). Probably pretty lucky on that one, more than anything. I did declare it all but they didn't ask to look.

If you can't do a couple of trips to get it all back, you're probably going to have to ship it through the means described above.

Bacchaebabe, you're lucky. I used to live in NZ on secondment and travel frequently back to Australia, South Africa and Chile / Argentina. I used to love the 2 bottles of liquor and 6 bottle wine duty free limit back into NZ. Always great to bring back some local stuff to share with friends (except for that Indian experience) I used to often bring back a case, say I was in the trade, and cruise through. Living in Australia hasn't been as joyful. On my last trip to NZ I visited my old friend Peter Maude Fine Wines in Auckland. A big fan of the Chateau Verez Rose they stock. Bought six bottles back. Got a very minial invoice from Peter just in case with customs wanted to cause problems. On arrival in Adelaide I was held up, after declaring the grog, for about an hour for them to collect $20 odd dollars duty. Hardly worth the officers or my time. At least in NZ they don't charge duty unless it reaches a minimum $50. So just be aware that it's up to the customs officer on the day. And as Steve Irwin would say Declare or Beware!

Matthew Moate wrote:Beachbabe

woops, corrected. That's the problem with reading quickly. Thanks and yes I thought it was a strange name for a wine forum when I wrote it. Guess I should check in future. Bacchaebabe please accept my apologies...

thanks for the replies and advice. I will give the customs broker a call and see what they say. May ship everything back in the container if I am not going to get hit with to much duty. If not I have a couple of trips back and forth so I will bring in some at a time and just declare and see what the guy on the desk says on the day. Will let you know how I get on.

cheers

Gerry

Red Bigot wrote:

Matthew Moate wrote:Beachbabe

Ha, funny! I'm anything but a beachbabe! No offence taken.

I ended up shipping about 36 bottles back in the container. Left it until a late Feb departure from Europe with end of April arrival in Oz to minimize temperature effects. Customs asked me for a value on the wine and I ended up declaring what I thought were fairly nominal amounts. Ended up paying about $300 in duty for GST (10%), WET (29%) & customs duty (5%). At less than $10 a bottle it still made it worth my while bringing everything back compared to prices in Oz if transport conditions were ok. In hindsight I probably could have got away with declaring a lesser value as they did not seem to question what was given.

Cheers

Gerry