Hey to all you Canadians... I'm interested in buying some racing wheels from the states as a gift to myself using insurance money from when a car hit me on my bike and was wondering what sort of duty costs I might be looking at...
Thanks

If you get them mailed, you'll pay a $5 processing fee plus GST. If they're shipped on something like UPS or Fedex, you'll pay a "brokerage" fee of $50-60 plus GST. Wheels may be too large to mail, so you may have to pay the higher fees. I've brought in a lot of stuff from the US and those are the fees I've usually paid for the last few years, particularly on things coming from the US. If the wheels are made in the US, such as Zipp, that's all customs can charge you because of the free trade agreement. On something non-US origin (e.g. Lightweight), they can charge more but no longer seem to do enough research to find the original manufacturing location.

There is no duty charged on wheels by the CDN government. Just GST and PST. It has nothing to do with free trade, wheels are not on the duty list from any country. We don't make wheels in Canada.

USPS charges $5 flat for brokerage, but UPS charges % of the value. Avoid UPS for anything if you can. When you work it all out, for new wheels, it's usually best to buy local.
Or, drive to US with a wheel-less bike, come back with wheels. But that's smuggling.

Further to my earlier note, I just picked up a shipment from Excel Sports at the post office and they didn't even charge the $5 or GST. My son received some clothing last week and wasn't charged either. We'll see if we get a bill in the mail (I think I may have had that once previously).

Buying race wheels? Carbon Sports North America is based in Ottawa, so now it's easier to justify a set...no brokerage fees!

I recently sold some wheels to a guy in Canada. After quote from all the Big guys USPS ended up being about $100 cheaper to ship. FYI