Seems like every week I learn about something else that I am ignorant about with regard to international travel.\u00a0 This week it’s Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.\u00a0 When an American citizen comes back to the U.S. after traveling abroad, s\/he must clear customs. One of the stops is filling out one or more entry forms.\u00a0 You need to declare everything that you have purchased on your travels and pay import duty tax on those items.\u00a0 If you have new items that you don’t have a receipt for, you must pay the tax whether or not you owned those things before you left the U.S.\u00a0 For example, John bought a mini laptop and a digital camera several weeks ago.\u00a0 To avoid the tax on items already owned, he must complete a Certificate of Registration (CBP form #4457) and submit proof of purchase to the CBP.\u00a0 The items on the certificate must be physically verified by a border agent.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So on our short layover in Atlanta on our way to China, we need to find Border Protection and get our proof of ownership paper certified. \u00a0 Before being cleared to board our aircraft, we could also be selected for a random search of our luggage or even a personal search by Border Protection — not counting searches by the TSA (Transporation Security Administation).\u00a0 Well, at least now we have a heads-up and won’t be totally shocked if we are chosen for that experience.\u00a0 And I guess it will be preparation for lack of freedoms in a non-democratic land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seems like every week I learn about something else that I am ignorant about with regard to international travel.\u00a0 This week it’s Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.\u00a0 When an American citizen comes back to the U.S. after traveling abroad, s\/he must clear customs. One of the stops is filling out one or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}