I've searched 'importing household goods', but...

[nisakiman]

...I haven't found any info about what I would like to bring.

I've read about the fact that if the goods come in under my wife's name, they will be duty free. Also that they must be used, not duplicated and not 'luxury items'.

But I can find no info on my situation.

I am a professional carpenter, and over the years have built up a collection of valuable (when new) and indispensable hand and power tools (many more or less duplicated, although they are for different jobs, or aspects of jobs - for instance I have four routers, two 1/4 inch and two 1/2 inch, which are all used for different types of work, several different types of drills / power drivers, a few circular saws etc etc). I'm not including non-portable stuff like my bench saw, which weighs half a ton on it's own - that I'd have to sell - but all the portable stuff.

I'm close to retirement age, and will in all likelihood be retiring to Thailand where we would like to buy a piece of land on which I would like to build a traditional Thai style timber house. This for two reasons - 1) I like them, and 2) I would be able to do much of the work myself, which would be both a cost saving and would mean the work is done to my satisfaction. It is not my intention to seek paid work with the tools of my trade (I want to retire, remember), merely to pursue my own interests. As well as my work, carpentry is my hobby. I love it.

Does anyone have any experience of shipping this sort of stuff as 'household goods'? I would point out that it is all very obviously used, no new stuff, but mostly top quality (read expensive) professional stuff. Would tools have to shipped separately as dutiable goods, even though old and well used?

Any info on this would be appreciated.

[chickenslegs]

http://www.customs.go.th/wps/wcm/connect/custen/individuals/importing+used+or+secondhand+household+effects/importingusedsecondhandhouseholdeffects+

At the end of this page there are contact details for customs enquiries.

Hope this helps.

[nisakiman]

Thanks for that link. There seems no clear ruling on what my enquiry was, so I guess I'll have to get the SOH to call them up. I have a feeling it may be a bit of a grey area. For instance, in the link, it says at one point:

"Personal effects accompanied with the owner traveling into or out of Thailand, including any goods used or will be used commercially are not eligible as household effects and cannot brought in tax and duty free as the household effects."

Not clear whether that 'used commercially' bit only applies to goods carried with you or not.

I'd be interested to know if anyone on TV has brought any professional tools in, and how it went.

[wym]

Lots of past traffic here on woodworking tools even bench saws etc, indicated no problem, used and mixed in with other household stuff.

[Beetlejuice]

One major point is; you cannot buy land in Thailand legally unless it is completely financed by your Thai wife`s money and you can prove it. My advise is; send any monies over for buying the land in your wife`s name to a Thai bank account solely in her name, then use these funds for the purchasing of real estate in Thailand. Or as the wise man says; cover your own a-se at all times.

I learned from my mistakes and here is the benefit of my experience:

Firstly foreign shipping companies will only take stuff as far as the port in Bangkok. If you want to continue on to any other destination within Thailand, you must arrange for the cases to be picked up by another carrier company in Thailand, preferable one based in the destination where you want the goods delivered.

Use a Thai name from the very beginning with the shipping company. If you declare the goods in a farang name, you will be stung for a huge amount of Import tax, to be paid before you can retrieve your goods from the Bangkok port. They will be held for ransom until you pay.

If you bring new electrical items over, you will be charged import tax at a huge percent. Try and bring only your used electrical goods and one of each, you may have to pay import tax on more than one item that the officials think you don't need. If you do try and bring in new electrical items, take off any wrapping and put on old plugs so they appear used.

When you hire your carrier in Thailand to collect the goods from port, don't tell them you have a computer, otherwise they will try and con you for more money. The Thai carrier will not open the cases and have no right to because the cases would have already been cleared by customs in Bangkok.

The shipping company charges by cubic space and not weight, but if the cases are considered too heavy, they will refuse to take them. The customs in Bangkok charge import tax by the value of the goods, but mostly waver this tax or charge a minimum for Thai people.

As for packing, wrap fragile items in newspaper, then place the fragile items in with your good blankets or clothes so that they are buffered. This way you are not wasting any space on excess padding as your clothes are excellent buffers and will protect your fragile items when the cases are throw and smashed about by the carriers, which they will be.

And finally as in my case, the carrier company in Chiang Mai later refused to bring up my cases from a depot in Bangkok until their truck was full, meaning I had to wait until other customers were also bringing their goods up here and the truck was full. Make inquiries about this with the Thai carrier company before hand.

Hope this helps?

[nisakiman]

One major point is; you cannot buy land in Thailand legally unless it is completely financed by your Thai wife`s money and you can prove it. My advise is; send any monies over for buying the land in your wife`s name to a Thai bank account solely in her name, then use these funds for the purchasing of real estate in Thailand. Or as the wise man says; cover your own a-se at all times.

I learned from my mistakes and here is the benefit of my experience:

Firstly foreign shipping companies will only take stuff as far as the port in Bangkok. If you want to continue on to any other destination within Thailand, you must arrange for the cases to be picked up by another carrier company in Thailand, preferable one based in the destination where you want the goods delivered.

Use a Thai name from the very beginning with the shipping company. If you declare the goods in a farang name, you will be stung for a huge amount of Import tax, to be paid before you can retrieve your goods from the Bangkok port. They will be held for ransom until you pay.

If you bring new electrical items over, you will be charged import tax at a huge percent. Try and bring only your used electrical goods and one of each, you may have to pay import tax on more than one item that the officials think you don't need. If you do try and bring in new electrical items, take off any wrapping and put on old plugs so they appear used.

When you hire your carrier in Thailand to collect the goods from port, don't tell them you have a computer, otherwise they will try and con you for more money. The Thai carrier will not open the cases and have no right to because the cases would have already been cleared by customs in Bangkok.

The shipping company charges by cubic space and not weight, but if the cases are considered too heavy, they will refuse to take them. The customs in Bangkok charge import tax by the value of the goods, but mostly waver this tax or charge a minimum for Thai people.

As for packing, wrap fragile items in newspaper, then place the fragile items in with your good blankets or clothes so that they are buffered. This way you are not wasting any space on excess padding as your clothes are excellent buffers and will protect your fragile items when the cases are throw and smashed about by the carriers, which they will be.

And finally as in my case, the carrier company in Chiang Mai later refused to bring up my cases from a depot in Bangkok until their truck was full, meaning I had to wait until other customers were also bringing their goods up here and the truck was full. Make inquiries about this with the Thai carrier company before hand.

Hope this helps?

Some useful tips there, thanks for the input. It's doubtful we would be trying to bring anything new in.

Re the money to purchase the land, I do remember reading here before about the money having to be provably my wife's. As well as my personal account here, we also have a joint account. If I was to transfer money into our joint account here, and then transfer it to my wife's account in LOS, would that pass muster as far as the authorities are concerned? Alternatively, she could borrow the money from her parents or brother, and I could then pay them back. Would that work?

Also, I have a lot of CDs (maybe a thousand), many of which have been downloaded from P2P sites over the years - would those get through, or should I transfer them all to flash drives (a major task, but I'd do it if necessary)? And what about the desktop and external HDD? Will they want to know what's on them? (Again, maybe a terabyte or so of downloaded movies/documentaries/series on them, although I need to do some housekeeping and delete a lot of stuff).

Lots of past traffic here on woodworking tools even bench saws etc, indicated no problem, used and mixed in with other household stuff.

Blimey, I'd love to bring my bench saw too (it's a combi, and has a planer/thicknesser and spindle moulder integrated), but I thought that would be stretching it a bit as 'household goods'!

I'd assumed I'd have to arrange onward transport from Bangkok. I'd probably crate everything and then send it in a part or full container, so the crates would have to come out of the container for separate shipping anyway.

[Beetlejuice]

One major point is; you cannot buy land in Thailand legally unless it is completely financed by your Thai wife`s money and you can prove it. My advise is; send any monies over for buying the land in your wife`s name to a Thai bank account solely in her name, then use these funds for the purchasing of real estate in Thailand. Or as the wise man says; cover your own a-se at all times.

I learned from my mistakes and here is the benefit of my experience:

Firstly foreign shipping companies will only take stuff as far as the port in Bangkok. If you want to continue on to any other destination within Thailand, you must arrange for the cases to be picked up by another carrier company in Thailand, preferable one based in the destination where you want the goods delivered.

Use a Thai name from the very beginning with the shipping company. If you declare the goods in a farang name, you will be stung for a huge amount of Import tax, to be paid before you can retrieve your goods from the Bangkok port. They will be held for ransom until you pay.

If you bring new electrical items over, you will be charged import tax at a huge percent. Try and bring only your used electrical goods and one of each, you may have to pay import tax on more than one item that the officials think you don't need. If you do try and bring in new electrical items, take off any wrapping and put on old plugs so they appear used.

When you hire your carrier in Thailand to collect the goods from port, don't tell them you have a computer, otherwise they will try and con you for more money. The Thai carrier will not open the cases and have no right to because the cases would have already been cleared by customs in Bangkok.

The shipping company charges by cubic space and not weight, but if the cases are considered too heavy, they will refuse to take them. The customs in Bangkok charge import tax by the value of the goods, but mostly waver this tax or charge a minimum for Thai people.

As for packing, wrap fragile items in newspaper, then place the fragile items in with your good blankets or clothes so that they are buffered. This way you are not wasting any space on excess padding as your clothes are excellent buffers and will protect your fragile items when the cases are throw and smashed about by the carriers, which they will be.

And finally as in my case, the carrier company in Chiang Mai later refused to bring up my cases from a depot in Bangkok until their truck was full, meaning I had to wait until other customers were also bringing their goods up here and the truck was full. Make inquiries about this with the Thai carrier company before hand.

Hope this helps?

Some useful tips there, thanks for the input. It's doubtful we would be trying to bring anything new in.

Re the money to purchase the land, I do remember reading here before about the money having to be provably my wife's. As well as my personal account here, we also have a joint account. If I was to transfer money into our joint account here, and then transfer it to my wife's account in LOS, would that pass muster as far as the authorities are concerned? Alternatively, she could borrow the money from her parents or brother, and I could then pay them back. Would that work?

Also, I have a lot of CDs (maybe a thousand), many of which have been downloaded from P2P sites over the years - would those get through, or should I transfer them all to flash drives (a major task, but I'd do it if necessary)? And what about the desktop and external HDD? Will they want to know what's on them? (Again, maybe a terabyte or so of downloaded movies/documentaries/series on them, although I need to do some housekeeping and delete a lot of stuff).

Lots of past traffic here on woodworking tools even bench saws etc, indicated no problem, used and mixed in with other household stuff.

Blimey, I'd love to bring my bench saw too (it's a combi, and has a planer/thicknesser and spindle moulder integrated), but I thought that would be stretching it a bit as 'household goods'!

I'd assumed I'd have to arrange onward transport from Bangkok. I'd probably crate everything and then send it in a part or full container, so the crates would have to come out of the container for separate shipping anyway.

Re the money to purchase the land, I do remember reading here before about the money having to be provably my wife's. As well as my personal account here, we also have a joint account. If I was to transfer money into our joint account here, and then transfer it to my wife's account in LOS, would that pass muster as far as the authorities are concerned? Alternatively, she could borrow the money from her parents or brother, and I could then pay them back. Would that work?

Borrowing money from anyone to purchase real estate in Thailand and then paying it back, still means you are financing the purchase. Several options to do this:

Send the money over from a joint account you have with your wife in the UK, or from an account your wife has in the UK, either to a joint account in Thailand or a personal account in your wife`s name in Thailand, not to a personal account you have in Thailand. Keep all the bank statements and bank receipts, including documents if you have a property to sell. You could say that it`s money earned by your wife from employment in the UK or from profits made from the sale of your marital home in the UK. If your wife has not longed lived in the UK, this may cause problems.

There are many extreme pitfalls to buying real estate and land in Thailand, and I suggest that you obtain some professional advice or from people with experience or do a lot of research before diving in at the deep end.

Also, I have a lot of CDs (maybe a thousand), many of which have been downloaded from P2P sites over the years - would those get through, or should I transfer them all to flash drives (a major task, but I'd do it if necessary)? And what about the desktop and external HDD? Will they want to know what's on them? (Again, maybe a terabyte or so of downloaded movies/documentaries/series on them, although I need to do some housekeeping and delete a lot of stuff).

I doubt if you will have any problems bringing over a desktop or an external HDD or DVDs or CDs of your downloads, unless it`s XXX rated material or political that is banned in Thailand. But other problems that may occur are that these CDs don`t seem to last long due to the climate here, plus these are all rather outdated now. You could transfer the data onto flash drives prior to shipping them here or do that here or chance storing the CDs in Thailand. That`s up to your own discretion.

Something else to take into consideration: are the downloads on your CDs suitable for playing on a HD TV, plus they also have to be on the pal systems the same as Thailand? If not because they are of low memory and quality, then most of the stuff can be found for viewing Online these days, so you may want to decide whether it is worth shipping them over or not.

Edited February 18, 2014 by Beetlejuice

[jcgodber]

When my Thai wife and I moved here from the U.S. I loaded EVERYTHING we both owned into a container. As far as I was concerned all my shop tools,table saw drill press, everything I owned will be my wife's property when I die. AS I said all was listed as my wife's.

The only thing I did not bring was my golf cart as my shipping company strongly advised against it.

At one point had was thinking of strapping a set of lawnmower reels to the side and call it a "riding mower"

I have a brand new Hoover vacuum cleaner that has been sitting in my garage for years as it is unusable, it is 120 volt AND sucks 10 amps..... that is a big transformer.

My table saw had a way to change the wires so as to use 220 volt instead of 110.

Use a shipping agent to avoid any problems. My locked and sealed container passed through customs unopened and delivered to my front door.

I have found that no matter how hard I tried, I sooner or later plugged some 120 volt appliance into a 220 V outlet and made a instant "boat anchor"

[wym]

If you have anywhere even close to a container, then just do a container.

And personally I'd go for just having it brought all the way home as is and dropped in a prepared spot, arranging for a reasonable monthly rental fee maybe even a year, or perhaps even consider buying one.

Gives you plenty of time to unpack without creating chaos in the house, and they make a great secure lockup shed, if you're a woodworker and will be doing construction can't see how you wouldn't want one anyway.