I have often transported items to other countries for friends and co-workers. Often it is less expensive and eliminates worries about the item getting stolen in transist and not making it to the intended recipient. It is stupid to consider taking a pair of binoculars to give to a research scientist smuggling - maybe time to find you dictionary or google the term.
A co-worker is married to a Brazilian woman and when her family comes to the states they have a long shopping list of items to buy for families and friends. High tariffs are common in corrupt countries run by a few elite families. In Honduras one family controls the beer, another the concrete, and so forth. The attitude is to grab more and more of the economic pie for themselves even if it blocks any opportunity to grow the pie - much as we are seeing in the United States with our billionaire overclass.
If I sent the binoculars to a researcher in another state or a country in Europe there would be no problem. But Brazil and other countries place an arbitray 35% tax on the officials perceived value of the gift. In Costa Rica not that long ago if one brought in a very used high mileage car or truck the excise tax was based on the price at which the car sold for when new. The result was many people driving cars all the way from the USA to Costa Rica as it was the only way the vehicles could be afforded.
In the USA we have tax cheats like Trump and Gates but that is different. Many photographers choose to buy from B&H as they were not charging sales tax to out of state customers. I doubt any of those photographers reported this and paid the tax to their state tax agency. Does anyone on this forum do this or is this just hyperbole.
