Taxes vs Duty (Clip) | To Catch a Smuggler | National Geographic

You purchased this. We have to add this up. All right.

So how much is this adding up to? Do you understand?

Well, that's one side. It's got to go on the other side. There's exact prices of how much she paid.

She has ten. $15,000 worth of gold. Are you aware you have to pay duty on gold? You pay duty here. So when you come into the U.S.. Yeah, right.

All purchases. You have to pay duty on these items, right? But that's irrelevant to us. You have to pay duty to the US government when you purchase anything.

I do this every day. I know exactly what I'm looking for. It's always going to be fair.

And I'm all right. We're going to move on to the bags. So you did declare 6000 in clothes, and the new clothes that you are declaring are in there, right?

Yeah. No. Well, everything is recorded, so you can file a complaint if you think something is missing.

So you're declaring 6000, right? Yeah. And then we have more here. Okay, but you have to declare things the right way.

If there is a failure to declare, the government can seize these items. But you didn't declare everything.

But did you ever pay duty to be here like this? Look, no. That's irrelevant. This is US customs, and you have to pay duty here.

Okay. So I'm going to make the calculation. So the clothes you did declare, you were doing good. But then we have a lot of items missing.

So on those items, you're going to have to pay a penalty. The items you did, the clerk is going to be $506.

The penalty on the other items is $5,600. So I have to ask, are you going to pay it or...

20 penalty was pretty hefty. But people who want to bring in ten, $15,000 worth of gold are going to get penalized.

And she decided to pay, and she walked out to go with our stuff.

Yeah. Tough cookie.