Originally Posted by
drewguy
Understood - and the limit is 1l/person. 24 bottles is well above that limit, obviously (unless the travel party was ~18 people) so that's a positive sign.
(I guess I should ask separately - I've always assumed that the volume refers to the alcoholic beverage, not the actual alcohol content, which for wine is around 1/7 or 1/8 the bottle volume and hard liquor typically about 40%)
That is exactly what I was referencing - it is the actual amount of alcohol. So a one litre bottle of 40% whisky is .4l of actual alcohol. The rate of tax varies on a number of factors such as %abv, type of alcohol, size of bottle and country of origin, but for most types and countries of origin the tax generally ranges from "free" to US$0.33 per litre. So, for example, if one were to bring ten such whisky bottles that would be 4 litres of alcohol with one litre being exempted, so the tax would be calculated on 3 litres at typical rate of not more than US$0.33 per litre, so a net tax of about $1.00. Bring twenty bottles and you might get to US$2.00. not worth their time to process it unless they really want to mess with the pax.