AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums Belize Life Living in Belize Bookstore

Mickies is on Middle Street, about 150' from the south end, west side.

Glad to hear all is going well with the bookstore, moving down in June and now won't have to take a ton of books with us. See you there.

What are you expecting to pay in taxes to import the books etc.

Monica...come see us!

Pedro1...I am told (and have read) there is no duty on books. I still do not have an "official" determination though. Magazines are a different story and I'm still researching that. I'll also offer bookmarks, greeting cards and such, but those items are smaller dollar amounts and I'm not anticipating duty to be much.

I'm striving to keep the prices as close to US retail as I can.

There is no import duty on books.
There IS sales tax on them.

Since the U.S. postal service discontinued its international book rate a few years ago, the cost of shipping books to Belize is now a major component of the total retail cost. Books weigh a lot, and even surface mail (which takes many weeks or months) isn't cheap. For example, 20 pounds of books (a typical hardback book weighs a couple of pounds, and big ones weigh 4 or 5 pounds) from the U.S. to Belize costs US$45.40 to ship via surface mail and $71.25 via air parcel post. Book publishers and distributors often mark up the shipping costs, so it becomes even more onerous. Also, for individual books, the cost -- US$14 for a one-pound air parcel post -- is even worse.

But Cindy has experience as a bookseller, so she knows what she is getting into and probably can ship in quantity to get the best deals.

--Lan Sluder

Sales tax is normally assessed at 9% of the value.

There is another tax called Revenue Replacement Duty which, in the case of salable inventory, might apply. Just a heads up in case it does.

Thanks ckocian.
That one I hadn't heard of before.

Lan is correct, shipping costs could be more than I pay for a book! The only way to economically do this is ship by container...and that's a LOT of books!

I wish for a newspaper. Maybe Time or US News and World report would do instead. I'll even read old ones.