I got burned by this one a few months back, and have to say that I think that it's more than a bit odd that the exemption is only for personal goods.

I bought a $120 portable hard drive in the US, and declared it when I got home (YOW). The CBSA agent asked about the way the drive was going to be used, and I told him that it would be for business. What then followed was over an hour in the secondary inspection area while I filled out paperwork, found the magic numbers needed to identify the class of goods being imported, and finally failing to find my company's RM number by searching through emails on my laptop. As it turns out, we hadn't ever registered for one, as anything we'd brought in previously we did through a broker.

So now, though I'm happy to pay the $7 GST on my hard drive, I can't, since I don't have an RM number. CBSA takes the drive, and gives me a copy of one of the forms I filled out. Instead of just paying there, I head home, and contact our CFO on the next business day about the RM number. He registers us as in importer, and after a few days we get confirmation that we can use the number, etc.

I then had to figure out where to go to pay. This takes several phone calls, and I go to a CBSA office near the YOW airport to pay my $7. Unfortunately, they don't actually have the drive there. I'm told to go to some shipping company office a few blocks away. They have no idea what I'm talking about. I finally go to the CBSA office at the YOW airport, where I had to wait another hour while they try to find my hard drive. It turns out that I was given the wrong form when I landed, and they hadn't tracked the drive properly. Eventually though they found the drive and gave it back to me.

All told, it took about 3 hours of my time, and at least 1-2 hours of CSBA personnel time to collect that $7 GST. And of course, every last penny of that $7 will be coming back to us via our GST Input Tax Credit.

So, exactly why is that exemption only for personal goods? Makes no sense to me at all.