Limitations on Mexican Flights

Two years ago a friend brought me an Applr TV. Unfortunately I hadn’t given him the receipt for it. He ended up paying more to aduana than I had paid for the ATM.

Last year I made a point of giving my friend all of the receipts for items he was bringing me. All of the receipts were in Canadian dollars. I wrote an itemized list of the items; a column of the C$ price; the currency exchange rate; and the US$ equivalent.

The result was something like C$675 = US$490. So he was under the US$500 limit.

The aduana officer looked only at the C$ numbers and treated them as US$ figures. They were insistent that my friend owed duty on US$175.

Sigh.

At least arguing with them didn’t get him sent to a gulag as might have happened in a more authoritarian country. Instead, a supervisor came over.

It was the same person who had charged the exorbitant duty on the ATV. They recognized my friend, greeted him, didn’t look at the receipts, and waived my friend through.