FROM today Nov 16, 2010 South China Morning Post.

Those of you contemplating going into China - you probbaly will NOT want to bring in your IPad as the following article points out.  

On top of that, previous reports also points out that the new 4G IPhone are also subject to tax at the Shenzhen/Guangzhou borders (not sure about other ports of entry).  
Even personal use IPad/IPhones!

Besides which - you really don't want to drag around expensive gear when you are in China - so bring in your crappiest computer/mobile phones instead!!
Just a suggestion!!
SEAJ
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Customs chief defends mainland tax on iPads
Ivan Zhai and Adrian Wan
Nov 16, 2010           
Mainland customs authorities defended a new rule that means they can tax people taking in iPads.
Despite widespread criticism that the rule is a violation of Beijing's promise to the World Trade Organisation, officials said it was "helpful".

Huang Yi , head of the  General Administration of Customs' Department of Supervision, said that people have to pay extra tax on their iPads as they are now categorised as laptop computers.

It is the first time customs have confirmed iPads are taxable,  although stories of people being penalised for taking the devices to the mainland were reported before.

The new rule has already had a big impact on shops in Hong Kong, which offer the cheapest price for iPads in the world and attract  busloads of customers from the mainland every day.

A shop owner at Wan Chai  Computer Centre said business had fallen 30 per cent since mainland customs started to enforce the rule.

The regulation took effect in  August but did not attract public  attention until last month, when an  increasing number of travellers  reported having to pay 1,000 yuan (HK$1,165), or a fifth of the retail  value, to take their iPads home.

Many users complained they had bought their iPads for less than 5,000 yuan - the threshold for a taxable electronic product in Hong Kong. Most iPads, except the top model, are sold below that price.

But Huang said they fixed the  valuation of the iPad at 5,000 yuan because "most laptops" cost that much and they had to take into consideration " travellers' convenience and officer's work efficiency", the Beijing Evening News reported  yesterday.

Huang made the remark after the Ministry of Commerce raised the question with customs last month.

The ministry issued a letter to China customs, pointing out that one of the mainland's major promises to the WTO was to entitle all information technology products to zero-tariff treatment once the country joined the organisation.

The report also quoted the ministry as saying both the iPod value set by customs and the 20 per cent tax rate were too high.

Meanwhile, consumers complained about having to pay up.

Zhu Lieyu , a senior lawyer with Guangdong Guoding Law Firm, said the regulations violated China's promise to eliminate duty on IT products covered by the WTO's  Information Technology Agreement.

They also seemed to ignore the basic fact that people always take portable electronic devices with them on cross-border trips.

"It does cause a lot of trouble to  ordinary travellers entering the mainland, so how can they call it  convenient?" he asked.

"The purpose of joining the WTO is to open the market to other countries and mutually benefit from the openness," he added.

"A shutdown or monopoly hurts only our people, who have to put up with more expensive products."

Wait, I don't understand this. You mean if I bring in any laptop (including iPad since it's now recategorized) into China for personal use, I will have to pay a tax? That's quite ridiculous...

YUP - that's what it is!!

You bring in any IPad or IPhone - even if an old one and is for sure/provable its for your own use and not for re-sale - if you're one of the many unlucky ones caught, they'll levy an RMB 1,000 duty on it.

And not so ridiculous when you compare it with just a few years back when they'd levy duties on just about anything you bring in to China then.  The laws and the application of such in China - the way it is ......is the way it is!!
LOL!

SEAJ

I believe if you use it ( cell phone or laptop ) for personal uses it is fine. There is no tax.

If customs see a NEW cell phone or a NEW laptop with a box or you have several cell phones or laptops, you will get taxed.  Customs will think you are planning to give it away or sell it in China. They will think the item will NOT leave China when you leave.  I believe this is true for any electronic goods.

I have been stop by China's customs officials ONLY once during Chinese New Year. I think It was because they saw a small computer box that I was using for luggage. Most of the time they don't care and use the X-Ray machine to do all the work. They are more cautions about drugs, guns and explosives etc.

[ Last edited by  Weelock at 16-11-2010 14:54 ]

Weelock - they are specifically targetting IPad and 4g IPhone - no matter if it's personal use or not.  

Find it on you, they'll just tax it.  period

SEAJ

Will be interesting to see how Apple stocks fare this week in the market.

This should not be such a big deal one way or the other this week as this matter about taxing the Ipad/Iphone started at least 3 weeks ago - and the Chinese newspapers had already reported on it then.

Also, these devices are for sale in China anyway - albeit a bit pricier than in Hong Kong;- but the RMB 1,000 duty wipes away any savings on this - plus more.  So the consumer will just go and buy their IPad/IPhone in China instead of HongKong and trying to smuggle it in.

BTW - another supposed "big item" in China these days is the Kindle net book as this device bypasses all the China Great Firewall and users in China can access any site using this device.

SEAJ

Maybe I am just really lucky? I got my apple laptop and iphone 4 in my messenger bag scanned through the scanner and they really didn't seem to care. I know they saw it because I wanted to make sure that it was okay to put my laptop and phone through the x ray scanner. It was through the GuangZhao boarder through train. I was there 2 weeks ago.

SEAJ thanks for the details. Many of my more senior relatives also use iphone these days and they often go to mainland. I need to remind them now.

The other issue is, I thought anything which could bypass the "Firewall" had to do with softwares. I did not expect a hardware (Kindle) could solve the obstacle. Interesting.

I would guess that most times, people bringing in their personal IPhone is not going to get taxed....as they just donot/cannot check each traveller coming in.

OTH - if you are one of the unlucky ones to be caught bringing it in - well, from what I've heard, no amount of pleading/rationalizing with them etc is gonna work and the hapless "smuggler" gets taxed this RMB 1,000.

Just tell your relatives - if they will insist on still bringing in their 4g Iphone, to at least NOT bring it in in full view of the customs guy.  In the pants/dress pocket probably works best as they usually first ask you to run your luggage thru the x-ray machine anytime they randomly pick out a traveler; and maybe NOT understanding their question in Chinese (or if they're old, having a hard time hearing!!) would also help, as you don't understand their question: - "Are you bringing in an IPhone?" LOL

SEAJ

I just spoke to a friend of mine and he just came back from Beijing 2 days on a work trip cum holiday with his wife and teenage kid. He and his wife had a laptop each and the kid had an iPad. They had no problems going in and out of China. The kid was playing with the iPad right up to immigrations. He was actually surprised when I mentioned to him about this "crackdown"

For what it's worth, they are white British ppl residing in Malaysia. Maybe white ppl get it easy??

Please refer to my preface to the article


As I understand it - this duty is ONLY being applied to travellers clearing customs at the Hong Kong/Shenzhen/Guangzhou and the Macao/Zhuhai borders and not anywhere else i.e. Shanghai, Beijing Xian etc.

I guess the rationale being that its too expensive for a phone/IPad smuggler to actually fly in to do his smuggling.  They are mostly targeting those travellers paying the minimal amount for transport doing this.

SEAJ

i travel to China via Zhuhai and Shenzhen weekly.
i always have iPhone with me.
90% of my colleagues carry iPhones & iPads.
we always put our bags through the X-ray machine.
no problem with the customs.

maybe the person who told u the news is trying to bluff/scare you?

Errr.... read it and weep?

Following is from the South China Morning Post
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Wednesday October 20 2010

Mainland takes a 20pc bite out of travellers' Apples

Simpson Cheung, Adrian Wan and He Huifeng

Have an iPhone or iPad and plan to take it to the mainland? Prepare to be taxed.

Customs officials across the border have been ordered to step up a crackdown on the smuggling of Apple devices, and people carrying iPhones or iPads are being slapped with an import duty even if they can prove they are for personal use.

Taking large quantities of electronic goods into the mainland has always been banned or subjected to heavy taxation. But the latest crackdown has extended the tax to individual users.

In recent weeks, many people have reported being stopped at border checkpoints by mainland customs officers for carrying iPhones or iPads. Some said they had to pay customs duty even though they were carrying just one device at the time and had evidence to prove it was not for resale.

A Shenzhen customs official, who refused to be named, confirmed yesterday that bringing just one iPhone or iPad into the mainland would incur tax. 'It's a common misconception that you can get a tax exemption if the device you are carrying is for self-use,' she said. 'In fact, iPhones and iPads are among the 20 products that are excluded from tax exemption. You need to make a declaration and pay the tax even if you are bringing in only one [device].'

In most cases, the iPhones and iPads being taxed are in boxes and unused. But an American-Chinese man said he was charged duty by mainland customs officials at the Lowu border recently for an iPad he had been using for months.

'I showed them the documents and photos I stored in the iPad but they wouldn't listen. In the end I had to pay 1,000 yuan [HK$1,165] before I could leave,' the man told a mainland newspaper, the National Business Daily.

Similar cases have been reported by other mainland newspapers in the past few days.

The General Administration of Customs in Beijing issued a directive on August 19, clarifying regulations on what visitors and mainland residents can bring into the country without paying duty.

It said mainland residents could bring in tax-free an overseas purchase valued at up to 5,000 yuan. The limit for visitors was 2,000 yuan for items they did not plan to take home.

While Apple products were not directly mentioned in the directive, the Shenzhen customs officer said it was aimed at addressing rampant smuggling of iPhones and iPads from Hong Kong and Macau into the mainland.

'We started to notice a lot of people carrying [boxed] iPads and iPhones across the border since April,' she said. The number surged in July when iPhones and iPads went on sale in Hong Kong, she said. In Zhuhai, customs officers have found and taxed more than 400 iPhones and nearly 100 iPads carried by individual travellers this month alone, local media reported.

iPhones and iPads are in short supply on the mainland and prices are higher than in Hong Kong.

Paul Jiang, 28, from Beijing, who came to Hong Kong to buy an iPad, said a 64 gigabyte version cost about 6,500 yuan (HK$7,570) at home and was only HK$6,500 in Hong Kong.

The price difference has lured visitors to Hong Kong to buy Apple products and take them back to the mainland for sale or as gifts. Given the huge volume of traffic at the border, it is difficult for customs officials to check every passenger.

Most people are not aware of the latest crackdown and many said they had no problem crossing the border with an iPhone in their hands. An iPhone user from Indonesia said yesterday he did not know of the duty.

Kurt Lo King-yau, manager of a shop selling parallel iPhone and iPad imports in Mong Kok, said business could be affected, as 40 per cent of his customers were from the mainland, but it was too early to tell.

Comdex Computer manager Kong Hong was not worried. 'Some mainlanders bought 10 iPads at one time from us... They would have known ways to sneak past customs.'

Yardley Luk Wai-kit, 25, who works in the advertising industry and owns an iPad and iPhone 4, said he was outraged when he saw news on the internet of the duty.

'My iPad is only for personal use. I am not importing any iPad. Why do the Chinese customs impose tax on me? It just does not make sense. It is no different from provincial officials collecting heavy taxes from poor people in the past, or triad members collecting protection fees,' he said.

Additional reporting by Amy Nip

Pain in the hip pocket

The number of iPads and iPhones taxed at the Zhuhai border in just one day: 500

oops.. didn;t read your first post...
haha.

i think they tax only boxed Apple products.

by the way, if they really insist on taxing you...
u can just leave your iPhone/iPad at the border.
then collect it the next time u leave China.

i once brought a PC from HK to China via Shenzhen Huanggang.
it's a big tower PC.
the customs stop me and said i couldn't bring it over, then told me personal products are allowed, but not commercial/industrial products.
because of the size of my PC, they deduced it's a office server and need to be taxed...

but because i don't have a receipt for it, they will tax it based on their China Import Tax "bible", which is around RMB 1000+

fucking ridiculous..
so i left it at the customs.
just have to pay a small fee for storage. can't remember exactly, but i think it's RMB30 per day.

besides robbery is serious in PRC

Please follow the guidelines on posting in the News section (see the red stickie) and provide a link to the source article. Thanks.

Got a question for you.

Yes I re-looked at my original post a couple or so days after I posted it up and noticed this missing link and had then tried to provide it; but by then, this particular news article was no longer available on the SCMP website free- one needs to be a paid subscriber to this site to access the archived files, which is where this news article then resided.

The same thing with the second article I posted up - which I also accessed via the paid website archives.

And the guidelines on posting up news articles strictly mentions that links to such paid websites are a No-No?

What to do?
Thanks
SEAJ

Links are in any case unnecessary all a member has to do is google the topic to get all the up to date information he/she wants.

Links are very much necessary, I'm afraid, in order for readers to see the article in its original context and format, any images, and of course any related articles. Links are also needed simply because we are dealing with 3rd party content and is courteous, the right thing to do. Please follow.

Seaj:
With regards premium content, we're talking about avoiding trouble for the forum. Take SCMP for example, I google one of the sentences and this forum comes up first, followed by SCMP. Now if I were them, I'd not be pleased that my content is freely available like that...

For sites like what you described, where content is free for a time before it becomes premium and protected, best to just provide the link and chat from there, without C&P'ing the article into your post. This will mean only subscribers will get access to the article.

Maybe the guidelines need to be changed to allow links to premium sites (without C&P of the articles).