Pleasure and Vacation Travel

13. Traveling Back and Forth Across the Border

If you cross the U.S. border into a foreign country and reenter the United States more than once in a short time, you might not want to use your personal exemption ($800 in this example) until you've returned to the United States for the last time. Here's why:

When you leave the United States, come back, leave again, and then come back again, all on the same trip, you can lose your Customs exemption, since you've technically violated the "once every 30 days" rule. So if you know that your trip will involve these so-called "swing-backs," you can choose to save your personal exemption until the end of your trip.

For example, say you go to Canada, buy a liter of liquor, reenter the United States, then go back to Canada and buy $500 worth of merchandise and more liquor. You would probably want to save your $800 exemption for those final purchases and not use it for that first liter of liquor. In this case, on your first swing-back, simply tell the Customs inspector that you want to pay duty on the liquor, even though you could bring it in duty-free. (If you did, you would lose the $800 exemption, since it's only available to you once every 30 days.) In other words, all you have to do is tell the inspector that you want to pay duty the first (or second or third) time you come back to the United States if you know that you'll be leaving again soon, buying goods or getting them as gifts, and then reentering before the 30 days are up. In such a case, you're better off saving your exemption until the last time you reenter the United States.