Yes I did change my plans and no I would not mind paying a refundable fee at all. I would question whether this would be "small" given that I imagine the fee would be the full tax applicable but that is immaterial because I am getting it back.

I changed my plans because there is insufficient clarity on how this works. I speak as someone that already previously declared a second (broken) laptop and had to pay about $170 tax on it and I then ended up throwing the laptop away because it could not be fixed.

Were there a published policy stating that I can turn up, declare a second laptop and leave it in temporary custody then I would not mind at all and by now would probably have been quite used to the process.

As it stands even SUNAT themselves cannot tell me what to do and no, I am not spunking $200-300 in Peruvian taxes just so I can enter Peru for 6 hours. If you would do that then it would appear that we have different priorities.

I was not expecting a fee in the neighborhood of $100+, and based on your experience, sounds like a perfectly reasonable decision. I also thought your stay would be more than a few hours....

I do not know what the deposit is but I imagine it must be equivalent to the tax payable otherwise people would just lodge a deposit and never return.

I think the applicable tax rate for a laptop is 18%. I don't know whether they add the duty too. It was $170 for a $700 Thinkpad. The current laptop in question is a $1200 MacBook Air.

I don't know how they worked out the tax, but last time they googled the price on Amazon or something, not particularly sophisticated.

And yes, it was just a layover and I was planning on going into Lima for 6 hours.